


Between Men and Lions

by standinginanicedress



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: College AU, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Secret Relationship, brief discussions of suicide, idk how to tag the main thing, it works tbh, sexual confusion??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-08-23 00:45:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 102,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8307316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standinginanicedress/pseuds/standinginanicedress
Summary: “I thought we could be friends,” Derek offers, to which Stiles gets an odd smile on his face.“Friends,” he repeats, an odd inflection.“Yes, friends.” Stiles laughs, just barely. It’s more of an exhalation of breath than it is genuine mirth or anything else, and then he smiles. “I’m pretty good at friends,” he says with a tilt to his head, and Derek clears his throat and has to look away.





	1. dramatic irony

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is all finished and written and divided up into nine chapters already - I'll post a new chapter every Monday~ 
> 
> But anyway I struggled to think of the appropriate way to tag this and I'm even struggling to lay it out in a paragraph - but this is pretty much a "discovering and dealing with one's sexuality" story, so if you like stuff like that or think you can relate then A++. That said, I know in fandom people like to stick to the fuzzy stuff where everyone is already out and no one's a homophobe or a biphobe, and there's nothing wrong with that!! But what I mean is, this is a bit of a more realistic take on realizing you might not be straight, coming out, etc etc. Everyone's situation and story is different.

It all begins with a table. 

There are two places directly on campus to get coffee, which Derek has always found entirely ridiculous. First of all, because they’re located in buildings directly adjacent to one another instead of being on either end of campus (which would’ve made a lot more fucking sense) and second of all because they use the same materials from the same supplier. They even both peddle the same overpriced cookies and scones that are baked by the same group of give-a-fuck students they have on work-study. 

They’re identical, aside from the atmospheres and the locations. It would boggle Derek’s mind that anyone would prefer one over the other, because it’d be like preferring one vaguely different shade of red to another. 

That being said, the one in the library with the abstract art statue parked directly out front with a babbling fountain in the center of it, aptly and unoriginally titled The Coffee Fountain, is closer to the architecture building by about a hundred feet, so it’s the one Derek has always picked over the other. The line is usually shorter and everyone there seems to take getting coffee pretty seriously so there’s not a lot of excess noise other than the grind and the steam, so Derek guesses if _forced_ to choose one, he’d choose that one. 

On the first chilly day after summer, Derek is sitting at the furthermost table at the fountain, sometime around four in the afternoon, two empty coffee cups sitting next to his laptop and among his textbooks, while he pit-pats away writing a paper for one of the last core classes he has to take to graduate. It’s a slow day, if the way the baristas are clumped together in the back slowly cleaning the espresso dust off the grinder with a paint brush while munching on day old scones is anything to go by – and Derek hasn’t seen another person walk in here for at least a half an hour. 

Classes are nearly over for the day so the library is already starting to thin out, and there are only a couple of other people milling around doing exactly what Derek is doing. Including – he notices halfway through his introductory paragraph – a person who appears to be trying to laser eye his way straight through Derek’s skull. Derek notices him at first and pays him next to no mind, figuring he’s just spacing out and staring off nowhere in particular and it just so happens to be in Derek’s general direction.

When he looks up three minutes later and he’s still being stared down with a look reserved for the way lions track zebras in the safari, he frowns a little bit, shifts his eyes all around himself to make sure there’s not something fascinating over his head or behind him, and then frowns even more deeply. 

He turns back, meets the guy’s eyes directly, and is given a slightly sarcastic eyebrow lift for his troubles. Which can only mean that, yes, he’s literally and honestly being stared down by a kid wearing a shirt with a bizarre cartoonization of Sigmund Freud on it. Derek opens his mouth to shout something across the café at him, and then thinks better of it.

He shakes his head. He goes back to his paper. 

Mercifully, he manages to forget about the ugliness and about Freud kid altogether for a happy ten minutes. Ten minutes of solace and peace. Ten minutes of his life that he didn’t know he should have cherished, a ten minutes he would in the coming weeks go back to over and over again and think of with nothing but fond devotion and longing.

It was the last ten minutes of his life before meeting Stiles Stilinski. If he had only fucking _known_ , he wouldn’t have just squandered those ten minutes away writing a stupid paper for an even stupider class. 

Abruptly, a cup gets slapped down right next to Derek’s laptop, the chair across from him is being pulled out, and Sigmund Freud (or, his biggest fan perhaps) is sitting down across from Derek and leaning his chin into his open palm, smirking huge and wide in Derek’s direction. 

Derek glances at the cup, then at Freud, and then back down at the cup again. “Is this –“

“It’s a triple Americano with steamed almond milk and almond flavoring,” he leans further across the table, leering, _leering_ , reminding Derek bizarrely of a lemur in a tree, and then smiles even wider, “I asked the girls what you normally get.”

“The girls,” Derek repeats. He’s having a bit of a hard time understanding the predicament he’s gotten himself into. 

“The baristas,” he clarifies with a wave of his hand, and then he pushes his chair in further and leans across the table again. His elbow is nearly touching Derek’s laptop. “I bought it for you.” 

Derek blinks at him. “Okay,” he says. Thanks are in order, perhaps, but something keeps Derek from offering any thanks whatsoever. Like his body intrinsically _knows_ that this is not a person to be thanked, not at all. That this is a person who is about to make Derek’s life much more miserable than he could have ever imagined. 

“You know, it’s an interesting table, this one,” he goes on, patting the object in question with his knuckles and smiling some more. Derek just can’t stop fucking thinking about the lemurs from Madagascar. “Sturdy. A nice sturdy, nice, nice table.” 

Derek observes him critically for a moment, but says nothing. He can’t think of anything to say. 

“I think it was, let’s see…second semester Freshman year that I first discovered this exact table,” Freud taps his finger to his chin in mock thought, and then adjusts his chair even _farther_ into the table, as if it were physically possible. “And now, gee, I’m a senior. Four years. Me and this table have had nearly four years together.” 

“Listen,” Derek starts, because he can sense that this is a person who, once he gets started, can go on and on and on, “I really have to finish this paper and get it turned in. Thanks for the drink, but I’m –“

Abruptly, Freud slams his hand down on the table top, alerting the people in the table right behind them to jerk and turn around to see what the commotion is about, while Derek just blinks. “I need this table,” he bursts out, sounding serious as all get out, and Derek just sort of sits there with his mouth hanging open. 

“You need it,” Derek repeats.

“Yes, yes, I need it. _This_ table.”

Derek looks around. “There are at least six other open tables in this room alone, not counting the _hundred_ all over every floor of this library –“

“Do I look like I want another table?” He glares. He’s got this look on his face that offers some indication of a missing screw somewhere in his brain, and Derek glances back down at the cartoon Freud on his shirt and thinks _the resemblance is uncanny_. “It needs to be this table. This table right here.” He scooches his chair the infinitesimal quarter of an inch farther into the table that’s left for him to scooch, and Derek realizes he’s not just being eccentric.

He’s trying to shove himself so deep underneath the table Derek won’t be able to remove him from it. It’s almost unbelievable, but then, what else did Derek expect? 

“Six other open tables,” Derek reiterates, gesturing to the café at large. “Why does it need to be _this_ table?”

Freud takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment as if gathering his thoughts and himself. “First of all,” he opens, and Derek knows he’s gone and made a mistake by even fucking asking, “this table has the least traffic flow out of any other table in here. Far from the door,” he points, “far from the bathroom,” another point, “far from the counter,” point, “and wedged right next to the shelf of ugly coffee mugs that collect dust all semester long.” 

Derek glances at the shelf of mugs over Freud’s head himself, and nods his understanding. Never in his life, in his entire four year career, has he ever seen a single person walking around with one of those mugs, let alone actually purchase one. 

“Second of all, it’s close to the fountain, but not so close that all I can focus on is the sound of the water. Third of all, it’s right next to the window that looks out over center of campus so I can people watch, fourth of all –“

“All right, I get it,” Derek cuts him off with a hand in the air. “You love the table, you dream about the table. What’s your point?” 

Lemur Freud stares directly at him with this maniacal glare. It’s like being stared down through the one-way mirror in some sort of an institution in the woods somewhere. “Have I not made myself clear?”

As if looking for backup, Derek turns to the counter, where the baristas are all gathered behind the register, placidly observing the scene in front of them. They stare at him, and one of them actually curls her lips upwards like _you fucking idiot_ , and Derek blinks at them and then turns back. 

“Listen, almonds, I’m going to graduate with honors –“

“Yippee.”

“…and it’s entirely because of the work I’ve done at this exact table. The same table you’ve swindled from _me_ , personally.”

“Right,” Derek rolls his eyes. “It was a personal vendetta.” 

“Wasn’t it?” 

“I’m not getting up from this table,” Derek announces, a little too loudly. A couple of people turn to stare at them, while the smirking barista up front leans over the counter with a grin. 

Freud looks like he cannot believe it. Like someone’s just told him they saw a flying pig. “I bought you a drink,” he says, incredulous. 

Derek picks up said drink, takes a long sip while making aggressive eye contact. “And what a good drink it is.” 

Across the table, Derek receives an open mouthed affronted gape, and then the chair is scraping out from under the table with a long _screech_ , and Freud is rising into a standing positon. It’s not to leave, as Derek had hoped it would be – it’s to tower over where Derek is sitting, as though he really has any place being menacing wearing that fucking shirt. “I have a fifteen page paper due tomorrow,” he says, all pomp and circumstance.

Derek blinks at him. “I have a two page paper on Emily Dickinson for Lit 110.”

“Oh, what are you?” Freud snaps. “A freshman?” 

“I’m a senior, just like you,” Derek slurps on his drink again, extra loudly, and Freud sets his jaw and looks _murderous_ , “just finishing up my requirements.”

“ _Listen_ ,” a long finger is jabbed onto one of Derek’s notebooks, and Derek raises his eyebrows, “I’ll give you twenty dollars for the table.”

“ _What_?” Derek bursts out with half a laugh. “You cannot be serious.”

A wallet gets pulled out of a pair of olive green pants, and then Freud is sifting through the bills he has shoved inside. He counts, pulls out a small wad of money, and says, “thirty-six.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He waits for a punchline for another second or so, and when the money just sits there in the air between them pinched between two fingers, Derek just shakes his head and laughs some more. “Buy a blanket, or something, Jesus Christ.”

“Listen, almonds,” he says again, leaning over the table and dropping the money down onto Derek’s things in a bit of a flutter. He grips the edges of the table, so the thing sort of shakes for a moment and Derek has to scoop his drink up before it topples over and ruins his books. “I will have you kicked out of this establishment and banished from the grounds –“

“Can’t do that,” a voice calls out from somewhere to their right. Their heads swivel to find its source, and there stands the grinning barista from before, still leaning over the counter and watching. When they look at her, she smiles a bit bigger. “You can’t have a patron kicked out and banished for taking your favorite table, Stiles.”

“Can’t I?” Freud – or Stiles – demands. 

“Nope,” she pops her lips on the p, and then gives Derek a wink. 

There’s this moment, suspended in time, where Stiles truly looks like he’s going to flip over the entire table just to ruin Derek’s laptop and his work and his drink and his books, just to be that fucking petty about it, but instead, he takes a deep breath. He rises up to his full height, collects his money from the table and fits it inside his pocket, and adjusts his shirt. With his nose in the air, he says, “fine.”

Derek says, “all right, then.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” Stiles decides out loud, and Derek slowly nods his confirmation of this fact. “Enjoy your _almonds_.”

“I will!” Derek says with mock cheer, and Stiles gives him another one of those maniacal lemur glares that really only his face could ever make, and then he’s huffing something under his breath and stalking out of the café altogether. As he goes, he sort of throws his arms in the air, and passersby give him a wide berth, perhaps out of fear of the unknown or the possibly criminally insane. 

Derek watches him go with half an unhinged jaw, while the rest of the people in the café titter to each other. The grinning barista appears at Derek’s side squinting her eyes and watching as Stiles practically punches his way through the glass doors leading to the stairs and then vanishes from sight.

“He’s likely to hate you forever,” she tells him, and Derek wonders if she knows him exclusively from the fountain or if she’s ever had a class with him, or even beyond that. A bizarre part of him wants to know that information, wants to ask her questions about the single strangest person he’s ever had an encounter with, but he keeps his mouth shut, and gestures back to his laptop without another word.

She takes the hint, smiles, and lazily returns to the counter, adjusting her red hair in its ponytail. 

The next time Derek and Freud – or Stiles, which isn’t a name – run into each other, it’s at the fountain, again. Derek has been coming to this coffee place maybe not for as long as Stiles has. Before he got into upper division shit for his major he used to go to the coffee place in the Student Union, but that was only freshman year. Since sophomore year, he and Freud have been going to the same coffee spot, on the campus of a private college with a class size of a little over two thousand alone, and yet Derek has never seen him.

It’s disconcerting that Derek thinks he’d remember seeing Stiles if he ever had, for reasons that Derek can’t fathom, but he pushes the thought aside. 

He places his order with the same red-haired girl from before – a person he’s seen a thousand times but never learned the name of – and rounds the corner to stand and wait for his coffee to come up, and there Freud is.

He’s got on reading glasses, shoved haphazardly into a gelled mop of insane hair so they sort of stick out of the left side of his head like a lopsided antenna. There’s a notebook open in his hand while the other scribbles furiously with a green pen and another one stuck behind his ear, and there’s a skateboard perched at his feet that he keeps rolling…and rolling…and rolling…back and forth, again and again, with just one foot. 

Derek pauses for a moment, suddenly hesitant. He thinks about staying back so Stiles won’t notice him, just so he won’t have to have another unpleasant interaction with the creature, but then he tells himself he’s being stupid. They both go to school here. They’ve both chosen this coffee place over the other one. They both like the same table. So what? 

Derek squares his shoulders and approaches, so the sound of those wheels rubbing against the cement floors underfoot gets louder and louder. Stiles pauses in his writing for a moment, using the bottom of his pen to scratch at his eyebrow, and then he looks up and spots Derek. 

Another one of those entirely disconcerting smiles crosses his face, like he’s suddenly very, _very_ pleased with the way things are going, and he shoves that pen against his other ear and turns to face Derek head on. 

“Well, well, well,” he starts, and Derek wishes he had just stayed away. “Looks like you’re a minute too late, almonds.”

Derek raises his eyebrows. “You’re not sitting at your beloved table just yet,” Derek reminds him, gesturing to said empty table, the chairs pushed in and waiting for either of them to approach. “You still need to get your drink.”

“I ordered mine before you,” Stiles says matter-of-factly, adjusting his glasses in his hair. “I’ll get my drink first and get the table first and all will be right in the world.” 

For some reason giving into the madness, Derek scans his eyes behind the counter, where he can see two drinks being made while the third barista takes an order from the only other person at the fountain. One of them is evidently Derek’s, with minimal writing on the side of the cup, and the other can’t be any other human person’s aside from Stiles’. There’s a paragraph, a literal paragraph, scrawled in chicken scratch markings on the side of the cup. While the girl whose making it looks like she’s had to take and make Stiles’ order a hundred thousand times and has no trouble with it, it’s taken her a while already. 

She meticulously foams the milk, glances down at it, and foams it some more, glances down at it, frowns, starts foaming again. Who has such specific parameters on _foam_ content? 

Derek’s drink, however, is nearly done. His Americano is sitting, with its almond syrup, steaming and ready to go. It waits only for his almond milk, being steamed as they speak. 

“What kind of drink is that?” Derek asks, feigning real interest.

Stiles has this look on his face that suggests that he’s put together the same exact information that Derek has, and he looks very, very unhappy about it. He keeps flicking his eyes in between their two cups, again and again, before finally settling them on Derek. “It,” he begins, that same note of superiority in his tone, “is a quad-shot cappuccino with extra foam, four pumps of coconut, two scoops of white chocolate, whipped cream and a caramel drizzle.” 

“You decided just eating spoonfuls of sugar straight out of the jar was too simple for you, I guess,” Derek shrugs. 

Stiles snorts, like Derek is so infantile and ridiculous. Meanwhile, he looks like a dumbass with a pen behind each ear and his glasses half-stuck inside his hair. He’s still rolling that skateboard underfoot, and Derek fantasizes about kicking it from under him just to watch him go down, just for the god damn thrill of it. Instead, he adjusts his backpack straps and stands up straight.

“Just because you think you’re so serious with your stupid Americano,” Stiles hisses. 

Derek watches as whip cream is shaken, and then meticulously sprayed over the top of Stiles’ foam, right at the same time as the steamer turns off and a long metal spoon is being dropped into Derek’s Americano to get ready to mix it. “I’m not rotting my teeth and brain cells out.”

“Oh, _aren’t you_?” Stiles says this – nonsensically – and then acts like it’s the single greatest zinger that’s ever been uttered, looking all self-satisfied and smug.

“Look, I don’t know what your _problem_ is-“

“We’ve established my problem,” Stiles says, zeroing in on his caramel drizzle being expertly applied in a lattice pattern over his drink. 

“The table,” Derek gestures to it. 

“It’s not just a table,” Stiles gets right into Derek’s face, nearly trips over his skateboard but catches himself at the last second, and points a finger menacingly between Derek’s eyes. “It’s _my_ table.” 

“Funny,” Derek drawls, narrowing his eyes at Stiles’ stupid finger. “I don’t remember seeing your name carved into it last time I was over there.” 

Stiles is opening his mouth to really let Derek have it most likely, saying what inane thing this time Derek can only imagine – but he never gets the chance. A cup is slapped down onto the counter right beside them, and the red-haired girl is boredly calling out “Stiles,” and Stiles is lunging. 

“ _Nyah_!” He exclaims, ripping the drink off of the counter and scooting over to “his” table, giving his board one final kick so that it rolls and hits the wall with a bang right behind his chair. He gives Derek that fucking smile again as he drops his cup down onto the table top, lets his backpack fall down onto the ground, and makes a big show of sitting down and spreading out like an octopus. 

Five seconds later, his Americano is deposited and his name called, and Derek sighs. For some reason, he’s put out about not getting the table, when seconds ago he’d have said the entire argument and issue is fucking childish and stupid to begin with. He glances at Stiles, who’s sitting there sipping his absurd drink and opening up a MacBook that looks like it’s been run through the washer a couple of times, stickers all chipped and faded surrounded by a dozen scratch marks all over the thing. 

Sighing, he takes the table closest to the bathroom (the worst table in the entire place, but the farthest from Stiles), where their view of each other is obstructed by the fountain, and then spreads himself out. The table is uneven, his chair squeaks, and the entire experience is just fucking terrible – made even worse just knowing that Stiles is probably satisfied with himself. 

He knows how bad this table is, Derek thinks, a little insanely. He probably has a fucking chart of this café all mapped out on his bedroom wall, and he probably spent weeks during Freshman year studying and observing each table individually until coming to the conclusion that the window table with the dusty old coffee mugs is the best one. 

He has notes about this table, Derek thinks, as he tries to concentrate on his work. He has notes that say the table rocks back and forth, and he knows that the flush of the toilet is distracting, and it’s too close to the counter so the steamer is all he can focus on, _Stiles knows all of this_. 

Derek leans back in his chair so he can peer past the fountain to where Stiles is sitting, and finds him looking like the cat that got the cream. The entire table taken up by his ripped to shreds notebooks, his phone, his chargers and cables and headphone wires, his bizarre chart of something that Derek can’t make out. Everything about him, Jesus Christ, Derek thinks, is just fucking ridiculous. 

He can’t stand him. He really can’t. His hair, his stupid skateboard, his insipid shirts (today it’s _HARVARD LAW – just kidding_ ), his idiotic coffee order, everything. 

He narrows his eyes. He never made an enemy throughout his entire college career – but he thinks he’s just gone ahead and gotten himself an obsession.

****

Derek cautiously enters the fountain, peering around the corner at Stiles’ favorite table, and finding it, blessedly, empty. There are a couple of other people milling around, one of the baristas bored and tapping her finger up at the counter, but Stiles is nowhere in sight. Derek breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe if he keeps timing it right, he can avoid seeing him altogether.

He steps inside, and upon closer inspection, finds that the red-haired barista is kneeling one leg on the chair that Stiles usually sits in at his table, a rag in her hand and a bottle of some kind of deep cleaner sitting on the table beside her. She’s scrubbing furiously, putting a lot of elbow grease into it it looks like, and Derek can’t help himself.

He comes up behind her, leaning over to get a look at what she’s cleaning, but her rag is covering it up. She turns, sees him, and glowers. Like it’s somehow his fault, whatever’s gone and happened. “Don’t you think,” she begins, chin going into the air, “this is getting a bit out of hand?” 

“What?” Derek blinks at her. For the first time since he’s been coming here, his eyes skirt down to read her name tag. _Lydia_ , it says, in careful, measured handwriting. 

With a scowl, she pulls her rag away and reveals a dark mark covering a pretty decent sized portion of the table. It’s all smudged and water-damaged from Lydia working it over, as she’s likely been doing for at least five or so minutes now, but Derek leans over and cocks his head to the side to read what he can make out. 

It says, no fucking joke, _Stiles Stilinski_ , in big deliberate letters, blocky and thick. It must be military grade permanent marker, Derek thinks, watching as Lydia starts scrubbing again, to almost no avail. 

He’s crazy, Derek thinks to himself, ignoring the vague familiarity of the name and shaking his head. He’s made an enemy out of a person who genuinely has some sort of a fucking issue to work through. That much is clear. Derek gapes for a moment, and imagines Stiles meticulously scrawling his name in those big letters with a huge marker, snickering to himself and grinning that absurd grin and rolling that _fucking_ skateboard around with his foot, and he just can’t even stand it. 

“Isn’t this grounds to banish a person from the establishment?” Derek demands, and Lydia looks at him with pursed lips. “He tried to banish _me_ , remember?”

“We can’t banish Stiles,” she snaps, and Derek blanches.

“What do you mean you can’t banish him?”

“I mean, I can’t. He’s _Stiles_.” 

“Yes, exactly.”

Lydia huffs and steps away from the table, observing it with her hands on her hips and shaking her head. Admitting defeat. It’s faded, at least, but it will likely always say Stiles’ name. The fucking nutjob. “I’ve known him since I was ten,” ah, so there it is, “everyone knows Stiles, all right? He’s not going to be kicked out of anywhere. Trust me. It’s impossible.”

_Everyone knows Stiles_? Derek thinks, narrowing his eyes. Since when does _everyone_ know him, when Derek has never even fucking heard of him?

***

“Stiles Stilinski?” Erica’s instant recognition of his name has Derek palming his face, for some reason. “Sure. He was in my psych of film class last year.”

“How come you never mentioned him to me?” Derek accuses, like there’s something to accuse her of, and she stares at him for a moment, carefully spooning into her cereal across the kitchen table from him. 

“I don’t think I knew you were interested,” she says evenly, as though she knows this particular line of conversation is a dangerous one. “And beyond that, everyone kind of knows who he is, or at least has seen him before.”

Derek hasn’t. He says as much, and Erica knits her eyebrows together and then shrugs. “He’s just a pretty noticeable person. The kind of kid that derails entire lectures, you know?”

God, can Derek ever imagine it. He imagines that in psych of film they tried to watch some shit like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and discuss its psychological whatever-the-hell’s, and then Stiles raised his pompous hand and started going off on rants about _standing_ and _book covers_ and dragged everyone down into his insane little world with him. 

“Likely you’ve never seen him because you’re on opposite sides of campus from one another in terms of class buildings.”

Right, that would make sense. Derek stabs into a triangle of his grapefruit, frowns, and opens his mouth again. “So he’s a psych major.”

“Minor, I think,” she corrects mildly, like this information is nothing and she could care less about it. “His major is something weird. Like classical studies, medieval shit, I don’t know. I don’t know him that well.”

“Yet you say _everyone_ knows him.”

“ _Everyone_ does know of him,” she says, leaning back in her chair and thumping her spoon against the side of her empty bowl with a clink. “What’s with you and this kid? This, like, obsession?”

Derek works his jaw, pokes his fork around in his half eaten grapefruit and then he puts his own fork down and bursts out, “I just can’t stand him.”

Again, Erica’s eyebrows raise. She looks sort of amused, while also in somewhat of a state of disbelief. “You _can’t stand_ Stiles.” She says it like it’s so fucking ridiculous, or ludicrous, or completely out of the realm of every known possibility that she’s aware of. 

“Is that surprising?” Derek demands, and Erica puts her hands up in surrender as she shakes her head. 

“No, he’s – a certain type of person, I guess, and not everyone’s type of person at that. He’s very…” she trails off, searching for the words. Derek can think of some right now, but he keeps them to himself, letting them float around on the inside of his head with the last of his sanity. “…interesting.” 

“That’s not the word I would use,” Derek mutters.

“How did you even meet him?” Erica seems suspicious as she asks this, leaning over the table and cocking her head to the side. 

“The fountain.” Derek omits nearly the entire story, mostly because he thinks it’s moderately embarrassing that this entire rivalry he’s gone and made for himself is based on a fucking table in a stupid coffee place in the god damn library. 

“And you saw him, and you decided you hated him.”

“Pretty much.”

She examines him very closely, as though she’s trying to read him. Derek keeps his face passively blank, blinking serenely at her and pretending to fork out another piece of grapefruit just for something to do with his hands. She parts her lips and then just sort of shrugs. “He’s actually pretty decent, if you talk to him.”

Oh, Derek has talked to him. Unfortunately.

He thinks of those blessed last ten minutes, between Derek looking up and seeing him and Stiles walking over and sitting down at that table with him, and he longs to have them back.

****

Derek is later than he usually is getting to campus. Normally he likes to get there a solid half an hour before his first class, just to park and get coffee and be ten minutes early, either already at his desk or seated outside waiting for the class before him to get out. This morning, he woke up late, had to drink the coffee that Erica makes herself (it’s ten times stronger than Derek or any other living human person can drink), barely looked at himself in the mirror before leaving the house, and is now sitting in a long line of cars waiting to find a spot in the farthest student lot he can park in with his particular permit.

The cars in front of him in C lot all find spots, finally, after he had to sit there listening to the obnoxious music blaring out of the car in front of him for two solid minutes, and he cruises forward and scans his eyes carefully over what’s remaining. There’s a spot underneath a tree, which is a rare find, and then there’s even a spot both underneath a tree _and_ right next to the sidewalk. It’s the perfect spot. Derek nearly can’t believe it’s still open.

He moves forward, heading straight toward it in all its glory, thinking that his day is finally turning itself around. He makes the turn, heads down the row, and right as he’s about to slide in, another car comes _screeching_ toward him, so they both have to slam on their brakes, making a loud combined tire groaning noise. 

Both hoods of their cars are half in the spot, half out, so neither of them can drive forward without risking an accident of some kind, and Derek squints. He takes in the sight of a blue Jeep that looks like it’s absolutely seen better days (possibly in 1975), a dent in the hood, a crack in the windshield, one windshield wiper hanging by a thread, and then –

Glaring through his windshield directly at Derek is Stiles. Un-fucking-believably, it’s Stiles. 

There’s a second, where they just stare and stare and stare, and then Stiles says something. Derek can’t read lips, but he has a pretty good guess that it was something along the lines of _motherfucker_. 

His door opens, and then he’s sliding out of his car like a snake, slithering down onto the ground and landing on his feet, slamming his door closed behind him. Derek should probably stay in his own car, where it’s safe, but as Stiles comes closer and closer, intent in his eyes, Derek can’t help himself.

He opens up his own door and steps out, but he at least leaves his open door in between them as some kind of a shield. From what, he doesn’t know. 

Stiles is talking even before Derek is all the way out of his car. “…absolutely fucking kidding me, you have to be, tell me this is some kind of a sick fucking joke.”

As he stands up to his full height, Stiles is just coming right up to the door, right in front of Derek’s face, and at least he doesn’t have that obnoxious smirk on his face this time. No, this time, he looks decidedly unamused, as his engine rumbles and coughs behind him. 

“I _know_ you’re not trying to park in that spot.” Stiles points at it. 

Derek blinks. “Right. My car is half inside that spot because I’m _not_ trying to park in it.” 

“You’re _not_ trying to park there,” Stiles goes on like Derek hadn’t spoken, jabbing his finger in Derek’s face and waggling it a little bit. “Because that’s _my_ parking spot.”

“Now _you’re_ kidding _me_.”

Stiles points at his own face – his lips a grim line, his eyes narrowed down into slits. “Do I look like I’m joking. Move your car,” he warns in a low voice, taking a step forward, so his hips bump up against the back of Derek’s door, “or I swear to God.”

“Or _what_?” Derek demands. “You’ll pour your eighteen-shot cappuccino with six different flavors of syrup in it all over my seats?” 

“Don’t give me any ideas!” 

“I’m looking at the spot right now, and I don’t see your name on a special little sign right in front of it,” Derek gestures wildly, and Stiles just stands there, hands on his hips, looking murderous. “And I don’t think you can sharpie it into the pavement, either, so I guess it’s not _your spot_.” 

“I have been parking in this spot for the last two years,” Stiles hisses, and Derek almost can’t believe it. He cannot believe he’s going here with Stiles again, _again_ , about a completely different thing from that stupid fucking table, and yet the conversation sounds almost identical to that one. It’s like going around and around in circles. He’s never met someone so stubborn in his entire fucking life. “It has _my_ car’s tire marks in it.”

“If you don’t move your car,” Derek warns in a low voice, “it’ll have your car’s _parts_ all over it.” 

Stiles steps back, mouth agape as though he’s so offended he can hardly speak, and then he throws his hands in the air. “I hate you,” he hisses, and Derek barks something of equal verve right back at him as Stiles turns his back and stalks back to his car. He looks over his shoulder once, face set in a scowl so intense Derek thinks it could melt the skin right off of his skull, and then turns back and throws his hands in the air again. 

“This isn’t over,” he hollers over his shoulder, and Derek rolls his eyes. 

Stiles climbs into his car, switches gears so the entire thing literally _yells_ for a second, and then is reversing back and away from the spot, the engine slowly getting quieter and quieter, until he backs away down another row, and Derek can’t see him anymore. 

Unbelievably, Derek has won the argument. He won the first argument at the table, it’s true, but that mostly felt like a win of luck. If Stiles and Derek had both just walked over to the table at the exact same time, Stiles would’ve just leapt on top of it, draping his entire body over it and hollering something like _he’s attacking me, help me, help!_ , just to get Derek off of his back. 

But this time. He really, _really_ won. He’s bizarrely satisfied with himself as he slides into the spot, the shade casting shadows across his face, and he smiles to himself. A victory over Stiles is almost better than any he’s ever tasted in his entire life.

***

Derek is on time the next morning. He has a specific parking lot that’s closer to the parts of campus he spends most of his time on, and it’s convenient and decent and has lots of rose bushes all around it, and Derek has always been very partial to it. It’s logical that now that he has the time to get a spot in that lot, he would go to that lot. And not taunt Stiles just for the sake of it. No. That would be petty, and childish, and stupid. He and Stiles are seniors in college, not fucking high school, and they’re not about to have a pissing contest over not only a table but a fucking parking spot too.

It would be too fucking immature. It would be beneath him.

Derek pulls into C lot and feels idiotic even as he’s doing it, but he can’t help himself. God, there’s just something _about_ Stiles that makes him act like this, there really is. Something about his stupid hair or his stupid clothes or the stupid way he talks, just _something_ , anything. Derek can’t put his finger on it, but last night, he lied awake thinking about the stupid way that Stiles does his hair and got so angry he couldn’t sleep for another two hours. 

Something about that is decidedly _not normal_ , but he’s chosen not to dwell on it for the moment. 

He drives down the row of cars, beelining it for “Stiles’ spot”, even while knowing how honestly off the rails he’s gone, and then turns the corner. When he does, as the full view of that particular row comes into focus through his windshield, he notices an odd sight. There’s a campus police car parked right in front of Stiles’ spot, scratching his head with a pen and shaking his head, while a small group of onlookers has gathered around the spot, murmuring to one another.

Derek slows to a crawl, confused and interested, and then stops altogether a few feet away from where the police car is parked. He turns his car off and gets out, and the officer turns to look at him as he does so, looking a bit put out about it. “You’ll have to move your car,” he says, and Derek ignores him for the moment, focusing on rounding past the car parked next to the vacant spot that Stiles has dubbed his, and angling himself to get a look at what everyone else is looking at.

The second he sees it, Derek skids to a stop on the tarmac. He stands there for seconds on end, even while the officer behind him is going on and on about Derek moving his car and how he’s blocking traffic flow, even while the rest of the crowd speaks to one another, just staring. 

He can’t believe his eyes. They have to be fucking with him – his eyes and his mind together have to be pulling a prank. It can’t be real. No one is this fucking absurd. No one. Not even him.

There, spray painted in bright red, is Stiles’ name. The I’s are dotted with stars. The t’s are crossed with curls on the end. It’s huge, it’s gigantic, it’s the most ridiculous and outlandish and psychotic thing Derek has ever seen in his life. He thinks for a moment – he just has to think. He thinks about Stiles sneaking out in the dead of night, bringing along his spray paint that he bought sometime during the day (a pre-meditated act, which makes it _all the more_ psychotic), a hood over his head as he parked a block or so away and then slunk into the parking lot like a fucking squirrel to do this. 

It’s like he’s dealing with a possible serial killer. But then, a serial killer has higher standards than this. 

Derek rounds on the campus officer even as the man is still going on and on about parking tickets and fines, and he barks out, “you know who did this.”

The officer goes quiet for a moment, and then he gives Derek a look. “It’s his name,” he says slowly, in a no nonsense tone of voice. “Of course we know who did it.”

“So, then, he’s expelled.” Of course he is.

“Of course he’s not,” he snickers. _Snickers_. Like this is a fucking _game_. 

“He defaced campus property! With his own name!” 

“We’re working on getting it removed,” he fits his hands on his useless utility belt, and Derek feels like reminding him he fucking failed out of cop school and wound up as a god damn campus police officer like he’s still playing cops and robbers in his backyard. “Should be pretty easy. A little rub, a little scrub –“

“ _Rub and scrub_?” Derek shouts, and the crowd behind him titters and giggles and watches with rapt attention. “He should be expelled! Or suspended! Or at the very least penalized, in some way.”

“We can’t expel Stiles,” he says this like he’s talking to some kind of an idiot.

“ _Why_?”

A blink, then two. “It’s Stiles.”

Derek nearly loses his mind. He really does. He shakes his head, making short, clipped noises from the back of his throat that try to be words but just can’t be, not right now, not when he’s in this state of mind. 

Feeling like he’s in an episode of the Twilight Zone, he backs away from the scene in front of him and miraculously manages to make it back to his car. He slams the door behind himself, throws it in reverse, and backs out and away from that entire situation. He grips the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turn white as he drives back to his usual lot, as he parks, and then he gets out and heads to his first class in somewhat of a daze. It’s just surreal. The level to which he’s obsessed, the _degree to which_ he can’t even fucking handle it – it’s all just surreal. 

Later on in the day, he spots Stiles standing next to a tree in the middle of campus, munching on an apple and rolling that fucking skateboard around with one foot. He’s got his hair done the same way, but he’s actually got his glasses on his face this time, apple juice dribbling down his chin, a thick book the size of the bible in his hands that he’s poring over, until he looks up and makes direct eye contact with Derek as he’s walking past.

Stiles smirks, that same fucking smirk from before, and waggles the fingers not currently clutching an apple around in the air in Derek’s direction. For some reason, it makes Derek so unfathomably insane he thinks he could just fucking punch his first through that god damn tree. 

Instead, he sets his jaw and turns to stare straight ahead, walking with determined steps to his last class of the day.

There’s something not right in how much he hates Stiles, he knows. But also, there’s something to be said about how much of a fucking little shit he can be.

****

Derek’s lit class, the core one that Stiles had thought made him seem like a freshman, requires him to pair up with someone, choose a classic American novel from the 20th century, and give a presentation on it at some point during the semester. The kid sitting next to him had immediately pounced on him the second he heard this news and asked if he wanted to partner up, since they were both just taking it for core late in the game and everyone else around them was a freshman. Derek had agreed, and they got assigned to an early October presentation date, and it’s currently late September, so they set up a time to meet up and pick a book.

His apartment is actually semi-close to Derek’s, more towards the outskirts of town, next to the deli that Derek frequents. He lives up on the third floor, so Derek climbs the steps, knocks on the door for Apartment 10, and his project partner opens up the door with a wide grin and beckons him inside. 

It’s a pretty decent college kid apartment – a coffee table filled with papers and books and lighters, a bookshelf nearly overflowing with games and blu-rays, a handful of thick, ancient looking books piled up on a specific spot on the couch that his partner picks up with a bashful laugh, saying something about his roommate being a bit messy. 

Derek sits down in the spot cleared for him, and then Scott says he got some pizza and that Derek doesn’t have to pay him back but can pay for the food next time, and it’s all very typical. Scott is nice and easy-going, as they google search 20th century books and try to pick one that not everyone else is going to be doing and shovel pizza into their mouths. 

Some twenty minutes after Derek gets there, the apartment door starts making clicking sounds. Scott ignores it, pointing a greasy finger at the cover for Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. “We get to watch a movie if we do this one,” he says with his usual level of animated excitement, and Derek listens as someone mutters a curse outside after the sound of what might be keys dropping to the ground. 

“We get to watch a movie with pretty much half of these,” Derek laughs, and Scott acquiesces to the point. There’s some more scratching and scratching and scraping outside the door, even as Scott just eats his pizza and clicks through the list some more, and finally, Derek has to ask. “Is someone trying to break in here?”

Scott blinks at him, and then understanding dawns over his face. “That,” he starts with a smile, “is my roommate. He has trouble with keys. Mostly, he has too many and can never remember which is for our door.”

_God dammit_ comes through the wood of the door, and then the door handle jiggles fruitlessly. 

“Can’t you just let him in?”

“He needs to learn to label his keys,” Scott explains with a shrug, and Derek can’t say he disagrees. He imagines there has been many a night with Scott’s roommate pounding on the door drunk at 2 am demanding to be let in because he can’t figure out which key is which – Derek would start going insane, at some point. He’d probably just label the damn keys himself when it all came down to it. 

By the time they’re seriously considering Scott’s suggestion, the door is finally opening up with a bang. There’s a couple of thumps, like shoes hitting the ground in the foyer, the door slams shut, and then a skateboard comes barreling into the main room. It smacks up against the wall right next to the hallway, where already there are a series of black skid marks, probably from the exact thing that Derek had just witnessed.

He’s about to turn around and regain his focus, when he notices that there’s something…eerily familiar about that particular skateboard. The wheels are four different colors – green, yellow, blue, and red. Derek has only ever seen one person on campus who has that exact skateboard, but before he even has the chance to realize it himself, Stiles is waltzing into the living room with his backpack dangling off of one shoulder and another one of those destroyed looking books he seems to always be carrying around with him.

He enters the living room, says, “explain to me why there’s an empty pizza box in the kitchen,” and then looks up. Directly at Derek.

Another one of those moments of suspended time, and then Stiles takes a step back, affronted, and flares his nostrils. “ _You_ ,” he spits out.

Derek doesn’t even look at him. He looks right at Scott, and demands to know, “ _Stiles_ is your roommate?” 

“Um –“ Scott can immediately sense the tension in the air, so he nervously flicks his eyes between the two other boys and frowns. It’s hard not to tell there’s something going on here – with Stiles suddenly clutching that book of his in both hands like he intends on using it as a weapon at some point in the next ten seconds, and Derek’s entire body going rigid just at the sheer sight of him. “Yes?”

“I want him out,” Stiles demands, tossing his book in the air so that it flops down on the couch right in between where Derek and Stiles are sitting. Derek can’t help himself – he looks down. _The Oresteia_. Which suddenly sheds light on the _weird major_ Erica had alluded to when Derek had asked. Derek guesses he’s a Lit major with a focus on Ancient Greek Literature, or just ancient literature as a broad subject. Why he cares, he can’t fucking for the life of him figure out, but he just – he just does. “I can’t believe you’d bring this fucking _rat_ into our home –“

“He’s not a rat,” Scott contends, heedless to how fucking ridiculous that word sounds, “he’s my partner for lit class.”

There’s a beat of silence. Stiles looks just about ready to spontaneously combust, and with no book to throw this time, he just clenches his fists and makes an entirely uncouth growling sound from his throat. It would be disconcerting, maybe even a little scary, if anyone aside from Stiles were making that noise. As it is, he just looks like an angry tree rodent, like a squirrel. 

“Well…” Scott says after another moment. 

“I hope you have the number of a good priest,” Stiles snaps, moving forward and bending down right beside Derek to snatch his book up and away, as though Derek will contaminate it somehow. “…you’ll need to exorcise this entire apartment after he leaves.” 

As Stiles moves away, Derek gets a whiff of the cologne and deodorant he’s wearing, a little bit of an undercurrent of toothpaste or a breath mint, and Derek intentionally inhales it.

“Um,” Scott says, and Derek rolls his eyes. 

“I’m just sitting here working on a project,” he says in a bored tone of voice, “I’m not summoning the devil, believe it or not.” 

“Oh, aren’t you?” Stiles hisses, leaning down so he’s nearly right in front of Derek’s face. Another hint of cinnamint washes over Derek’s face and he flinches, blinks it away, hates it, or likes it, or both at the same time. “You like that spot, do you? That spot right there on the couch? Huh?” 

Derek looks down at himself as if forgetting where he’s sitting, and then he huffs. “Let me guess,” he starts, remembering the pile of old books Scott had moved away from this exact spot earlier, “this is your spot.”

Stiles nods his head slowly, menacingly, mockingly, and Derek just wants to reach up and smack that stupid look right off his fucking face. 

“I guess next time I come over, you’ll have bedazzled the cushions with your name or something of that nature,” Derek shrugs, and Stiles looks like he wants to punch him.

“I guess you won’t be parking in my spot anymore!”

“I _guess_ I’ll be running over your name with my car every day.”

Stiles looks at him good and hard, for a solid five seconds, with his mouth hanging open. It’s the same unbelievably offended look he had on his face when Derek had threatened his car the other day. After another beat, he raises his chin in the air. “This will not stand,” he announces. 

“Oh, Jesus, Stiles,” Scott groans, rubbing one hand down his face. “We’re just doing a project.” 

“Oh, are you, Brutus? _Are you_?” 

Scott gets this expression that suggests he’s been called Brutus at least six thousand times since Stiles first read about Julius Caesar in the ninth grade and became obsessed with it. “Why don’t you just go in your room, pretend that he’s not here, and he’ll be gone by the time you come out for dinner.”

Stiles leans back and away from the couch, a grim look on his face. He looks at Scott for a long second, and then at Derek for an even longer second, and then he throws his hands in the air. “It’s like you’re a god damn curse on my house,” he says, to no one in particular but absolutely to Derek all the same, and without another word, he turns on his socked heel and vanishes down the hallway. After another second, there’s silence, and Scott sighs.

“He’s not usually so aggressive,” he sort of side-eyes Derek for a moment, as if suddenly suspicious of him, “I guess he really doesn’t like you.”

“I stole his favorite table at the fountain,” Derek relays in a detached tone of voice, eyes subconsciously flicking down the hall Stiles disappeared down. “And then his favorite parking spot.” 

Scott’s eyebrows raise, but he says nothing else on the subject. Derek gets the sense the two of them are very old, very good friends. Scott might not be openly hostile to Derek, just because he doesn’t seem like the type, but if Stiles hates Derek as much as he seems to, then Scott isn’t going to be Derek’s very best friend any time in the near future. It’s all shop talk from that point on, and they pick a book and search for the cheapest place to buy copies, and set up their next meet up, by which point they should both have at least started it so they can start work on the actual project.

Before he goes, Derek asks to use the bathroom, and Scott points his finger in the direction of the hallway. Derek follows it and goes down the darkened hallway, where there are three doors. The first one is shut up tight, and the one all the way at the end is cracked open so that Derek can see the hint a sink and a mirror, and the one on Derek’s left is wide open. There’s a soft noise of music coming from inside, so Derek figures that’s where Stiles is hiding, still. 

As he walks past he tells himself to not even look. To not even fucking glance. To not even side-eye to get the tiniest of peeks. But it’s like his neck is magnetized, his eyes forced without any choice whatsoever, to turn and to look inside, for his feet to slow just marginally as he walks past. 

There are tapestries all over the walls, covering up string lights and a ceiling light so that all the light in the room is tinted various shades of purple and blue and yellow, and Stiles is laying back on a queen sized bed that takes up most of the room. There’s a smattering of books all over it, among the sheets and wedged under the pillow and scattered at the foot of the bed, like he sleeps with them every night and has gotten used to it, not to mention the two bookshelves on either end of the room stocked so full of the things it’s a wonder they don’t collapse under the weight of it all. 

Stiles looks up from his book, gives Derek a blank look, and then goes right back to reading it with a haughty expression on his face.

Derek fucking hates him. Derek cannot god damn stand him, can’t understand how Scott could even stand to live with him, can’t stand his books, his room, his hair, his skateboard, his car, his entire fucking existence.

There’s just – something _about him_. Something that Derek can’t put his finger on, but that makes him project some kind of weird, bizarre and unhealthy distaste for him. Derek blinks once and walks past the door, closing the bathroom door behind him and letting out a long breath. 

There’s something about him, Derek thinks again, shaking his head.

****

The next time Derek finds himself at Scott and Stiles’ apartment is only a week later. He’s gotten about four chapters into Fear and Loathing, and he discovers that Scott has, as he bashfully relays, only read the first few pages. Derek isn’t that annoyed – the both of them have way more important things than this particular class to worry about anyway. They just look it up on sparknotes and observe the major themes and motifs, and start bullshitting the entire thing.

From the moment Derek walked in the door, he’s been taking mental notes. He noticed that Stiles’ skateboard is parked in what seems to be its usual location, right up against the wall against all the skid and scratch marks on the baseboard. He noticed that Stiles’ backpack is in such a position on the couch next to where Derek is sitting (Stiles’ spot again) that it looks like he haphazardly threw it there without a second thought, all of its contents spilling out as though it were vomiting books and papers and pens. 

He noticed Stiles’ favorite pair of shoes at the door, noticed Stiles’ favorite hoodie draped over an arm of the couch, and noticed a low hum of music coming from down the hallway. Case and point, he’s noticed that Stiles is here. 

As Scott furrows his brow, reading aloud about themes of the ruined American Dream and the downfall of American culture in general, Derek can’t stop flicking his eyes down the hallway. He can’t stop glancing at the backpack at his feet, or the skateboard in the corner, and he can’t stop thinking that he can smell cinnamint in the air somewhere, in short whiffs and floating imaginary clouds. 

It’s more than a little disconcerting. Derek can’t concentrate. If he’s being honest with himself, he’s already spent too much of his time in the past three weeks since meeting Stiles feeling unable to fucking concentrate. He can only say so many times that there’s something off about him before it becomes redundant, but he just can’t help it. There’s fucking something. It makes Derek insane. 

He taps his pen on his notebook, half tunes Scott out, and starts obsessively chewing on his fingernails. He got over biting his nails somewhere in high school, and here he is, back at it again – and it’s all been brought on by Stiles idiotic fucking Stilinski. Of all the people, he thinks, shaking his head as Scott is still fucking talking, of all the people and all the things. That kid. That _fucking_ kid. 

Abruptly, Derek is slapping his notebook down on the coffee table, prompting Scott to jerk in surprise and blink up from the laptop. Derek clears his throat underneath Scott’s gaze and says, “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom.”

Scott nods. “Okay,” he says, and again, he points down the hallway, as if Derek wouldn’t remember its location from the last time he had been here under a week ago. Derek stands, pointedly steps over Stiles’ backpack but maybe drags his hand over Stiles’ sweatshirt as he passes the couch, and turns down the hall.

The only light in the hall is spilling out of Stiles’ bedroom, his door wide open again, How stupid is that, Derek thinks as he walks – just leaving his fucking door open all the time. Derek has never met anyone who’s comfortable with their door wide open like that, heedless to the outside world entirely. He gets closer, and the music gets louder, and then he’s right there in front of Stiles’ door.

He had had every intention of just walking on by. He was going to keep his eyes straight ahead this time and not even notice him at all. He was going to pretend that Stiles never fucking existed.

Instead, his eyes go. Because of course they do. And they land on Stiles almost immediately, and he freezes right where he is. Something clicks inside of Derek’s brain, instantaneously, within the first second of setting eyes on him. 

Stiles has just pulled his shirt up and over his head, and he’s leaning down in his dresser, presumably looking for another one. His eyes aren’t on Derek – he hasn’t noticed him yet – but Derek is just – frozen still. Staring. Stiles’ bare arms dig through the mess of clothes as he mutters under his breath, and his back muscles move and shift as he does so, and Derek can’t stop staring at them. The pointed angles of his bones. 

Stiles blinks and turns his way. Stops sifting through clothes. Frowns.

He turns straight forward to look at Derek directly, revealing his bare chest to Derek’s eyes, and Derek’s mouth goes dry. Stiles has got tattoos. Two big ones, as a matter of fact. There’s what looks like a gigantic octopus wrapping around his shoulder, its bright blue tentacles spreading out in coils of color across his collarbones, almost straight to his other arm, but not quite. The thing is all striking blues and oranges and reds, eye catching and humongous. The other is toward the bottom of his chest and stomach on the left side, almost a rib cage tattoo but not quite – it looks like a Greek soldier of some kind, its most noticeable feature being an arrow stuck into his ankle. 

Stiles says, “oh. Almonds. You.” He crosses his arms over his chest, blocking most of Derek’s view of the soldier. Derek thinks he should say something, likely anything. Because he’s standing there with his mouth half open, staring like some kind of a pervert at Stiles’ half naked body. 

If this were a girl’s room, he thinks, and he were just standing in this doorway leering, and she didn’t have a shirt on, she’d probably be screaming at him to get out. Covering herself up, smacking him in the face, _something_. But Stiles just stands there, eyebrows raised, waiting.

Because Stiles isn’t a girl. He isn’t. But, Derek…he –

“My name is Derek,” he says, finally. It has just occurred to him, bizarrely, that Stiles has never once known his name. Never said it. Never acted like he cared to know it. This has always bothered Derek. It was one of those things Derek hated about him. _Hates_ about him. Present tense, absolutely. Absolutely. 

Stiles snorts, rolling his eyes. He turns back to looking in his drawer for a shirt, and Derek can’t help but watch his fingers as they move and sift. “Is it now? Are you sure it’s not Damien, or Lucifer, or Judas, or Agamemnon -“

“It’s Derek.”

Stiles squints his eyes, and then turns back again to give Derek his full and undivided attention. Something about it is unnerving. He’s still not got on a shirt. Derek tries his level best to not glance at Stiles’ chest again, but the blue and black of the octopus and the soldier are so distracting. He just wants to –

“Okay,” Stiles says slowly, narrowing his eyes. He tilts his head to the side and observes Derek steadily, like he’s trying to figure him out, and Derek’s eyes watch his neck move and shift. How it extends nice and long the further he tilts his head, how his eyes look in the dim light of his bedroom, and Derek realizes all at once –

Stiles is attractive. And not in a _that guy probably hooks up with a lot of girls because he’s stupid good looking_ way. And not in a _objectively yes he’s good looking_ way. But in a very, very specific way. Stiles isn’t just a general blanket term of attractive – or he is, but that’s not what Derek means.

Stiles is attractive, specifically, to Derek. Derek is specifically attracted to Stiles. Derek thinks that Stiles is attractive. 

Stiles is a boy. Derek is also a boy. 

Suddenly, Derek’s brain short circuits, his obsessive distaste for the kid, his out of character childishness in dealing with him, his inability to handle Stiles at all – it all makes sense. 

Derek has never, never once in his life, been sexually attracted to another man. Never. He’s dated girls. All girls. Lots of girls. Girls like him, and Derek likes them back, and he’s had serious steady girlfriends, a handful of them, and even more hook-ups and one night stands and make-out sessions and groping sessions at parties. With girls. 

Stiles is not a girl. But he’s standing there with his shirt off, miles upon miles of skin that Derek wants to touch, and Derek doesn’t know what to do with that. He hasn’t known what to do with that, this entire time. From the first time Derek saw him, likely, he thought he was good looking in that not-objective way, but he just…didn’t get it. 

“Do you need something?” Stiles asks, voice very even. Derek blinks furiously, as though waking up from a deep sleep, and stutters something that isn’t a word. Stiles narrows his eyes even more. “Are you going to apologize for taking my spots?”

“I – yes,” he blurts, and then takes two gigantic steps back. His back thumps against the opposite wall, and he jerks back and away from it, startled. “Yes, I apologize for your spots. It – yes.”

Stiles looks suspicious. He tracks Derek’s every moment with those eyes of his, and he steps forward like he’s going to come closer, and Derek jerks back again, this time almost slamming into the wall behind him. Stiles holds his hands out, amused, his eyebrows raising as he slows to a complete stop. “Whoa,” he says, half-laughs, “I always accept an apology, buddy. No need to –“

“I have to go,” Derek shouts this. Stiles blinks, and then nods, and before he gets the chance to say anything else, Derek is charging down the hallway back into the main room. Scott is just sitting there doing exactly what he had been doing when Derek left him, chewing on the end of his pen while he reads the sparknotes with a furrowed brow, and for some reason Derek is angry at him, for that.

For just fucking sitting there like everything is exactly how it was before Derek saw Stiles just now. Because it isn’t, not anymore. The entire world has flipped on its axis, because Derek – because Stiles – because Derek _is_ …

“I’m leaving,” he says, and rips his laptop out of Scott’s hands and shoves it into his backpack. Scott is surprised, looking up with big eyes.

“Are you okay, man?” He asks, watching as Derek dumps his notebooks and his pens all into his bag with frantic hands, practically shaking. “’You don’t look so good. You’re all – pasty.”

Derek bets that he is pasty. All the blood has drained clean out of his face and his fingers are shaking, and he can’t stop thinking about Stiles’ collarbones but Derek has never thought about a man’s _collarbones_ before, and Stiles’ sweatshirt is sitting right there and Derek sort of wants to grab it to determine if it smells like him. 

“I’m fine,” he stutters, and then fits his bag onto his back and backs away from the couch. Away from all of Stiles’ things and Stiles’ life, from Stiles altogether. “We’ll – another day.” And then, he turns around, and he’s gone.


	2. just like Thespis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Monday – an oxymoron lmfao. In any event thanks to everyone who left a comment in favor of me and my fics. I’ve spent a decent amount of time writing for this pairing and fandom so it means a lot people will still read my work after I’ve finished creating any new stuff for the particular pairing and show. There is no greater compliment for any writer of anything than to hear that something they created had an effect, emotional or otherwise, on someone else – so thank you!

Derek goes to his school’s soccer team practice, all the way on the far end of campus where the field sits, green and bright in the sunlight. The bleachers are nearly empty aside from a dozen or so others, mostly girls, sitting and watching their boyfriends or brothers or whatever-the-hell dick around on the field. Derek sits in the front row, with a textbook posed in his lap so he looks moderately busy, and feigns like he’s squinting off into the distance thinking about something, over and over again.

Really, he came here for a specific reason. 

Last night, he tried to forget entirely about Stiles and move on with his life, pretend that none of it ever happened. He decided he was going to stop going to the fountain, that the other coffee place is just as good as that one. He was going to never enter C-lot again. He was going to pointedly avoid Stiles if he ever happened to run into him on campus, or anywhere else, and frankly, he was going to go out of his way to try and never run into Stiles ever again. 

This seemed like a good plan, as he was sitting on the couch with Erica eating macaroni and cheese and half-watching whatever show she’s binge-watching this week. It seemed easy, too. Of course he’ll avoid Stiles. Derek _doesn’t_ like boys, he just got confused for a second because Stiles is so – he’s just…

It didn’t matter what he was _just_. Derek wasn’t going to speak to or see him ever again, point blank. There was no need to anymore. All of his problems would go away if he just ignored Stiles, so it was going to be easy.

Except, it actually isn’t. When he got into his bedroom and climbed in for bed, he kept thinking. He kept thinking about Stiles’ bedroom, and his arms, and his eyes, and his tattoos, and his neck, and the way he does his hair, and even when Derek tried to think of anything, anything else but him, he just kept coming back to it. Over and over again Derek played things that Stiles has said to him in his head just to get some mockery of his voice. He thought of Stiles sitting across from him at that table in the fountain the first day they met, how his legs nearly brushed up against Derek’s underneath the table.

No matter what Derek did, he just couldn’t stop. It’s like an obsession, he thinks. A disease or something. It’s not actually – not actually _being gay_ , but it’s just Stiles, and he’s a fucking problem, some weird glitch in the system. Stiles is a singular instance of something being _not right_ inside of Derek’s brain. That’s the only explanation he can come up with.

He had decided to prove it to himself by coming to practice, where all the guys on the team are going to take their shirts off twenty minutes in, and Derek will make scientific note of what he thinks about or feels while it’s happening. Really, he’s seen shirtless men millions of times in his life, and he’s never gotten that same feeling that he got from seeing Stiles like that. But maybe it’s just Stiles. But then, maybe it’s not. 

Derek doesn’t know which freaks him out more. 

The sheer fact alone that he’s sitting here at all right now suggests that several screws have come falling right out of his head, have been slowly unscrewing themselves since the day he and Stiles first fucking met. Sitting on the bleachers leering at dudes taking their fucking shirts off – it doesn’t get much weirder or lower than this. But Derek just – he just has to know.

There’s not a single bone in his body that genuinely believes he’s gay. He can’t be. Thinking about a girl right now, or looking down the row of bleachers to where a girl in the flesh is sitting, her skirt hiked up high on the thigh, leaning her chin in her palm as she watches with detached interest so her cleavage is half visible – Derek likes that. Gay guys don’t like shit like cleavage. They just don’t. 

All the same, Derek frowns and looks away from her, focusing back in on the proceedings on the field. He watches them all play and tries to look at them the same way he would a girl – he observes their bodies as they move and thinks to himself that he doesn’t…hate it, exactly. He’s not exactly raging hard in his pants or anything, but he’s not disgusted with looking at them or thinking about them. Which is – either normal, or not.

They kick the ball around and take turns being goalie and shooter, and the sun starts to get hotter as they play more and more, and sure enough, as Derek had anticipated, they peel their shirts off and toss them off to the side. Derek sort of shifts in his seat and tries to look casual, clearing his throat and staring down at his book with his head lowered for ten or fifteen seconds.

Then, he looks back up, and stares. Just like before, he thinks that all the muscles and toned stomachs and athletic bodies are fine. They’re all tan, and tall, and broad, just like Derek is, and that’s fine. Derek can’t say he’s _unattracted_. Which just makes him more confused than he was to begin with. He frowns and stares harder, cocking his head to the side, but he gets nothing. 

It’s okay, he thinks. It’s just fine. He has no heightened feelings or emotions toward these guys’ bodies whatsoever. Nothing like with Stiles’ – nothing at all. 

Derek quickly packs up his bag and stalks off the field, cheeks red in humiliation – he just hopes that none of them ever notice or recognize him again if they run into each other on campus. He feels idiotic and stupid doing that to begin with. Of course he didn’t get hard watching guys play soccer, of fucking course. He’s not gay. Why would he, otherwise?

The next night, Erica goes out to the library for some super-serious studying, so Derek takes the opportunity for some special Derek alone time. Which is what everyone does when they find themselves home alone, right? 

Derek goes to his usual nasty little sites and watches his stupid porn, laying back in his bed. He touches himself through his pants as he watches, just to speed the process of getting hard up a little bit, (because if he’s being honest with himself, he’s been watching the same six porn videos over and over again in a loop for the past three months, and he’s getting a bit bored of having to even see them). 

Finally, he tosses his laptop aside and pulls his pants off. Normally, when Erica is home, he has to bring himself off quick in the shower, silent and slightly petrified she’ll _know_ somehow, or he just brings his pants down to his knees in bed and makes quick, slightly uncomfortable work of it.

With her gone, he takes the time to fully pull his pants off and toss them aside. He pulls his lube out from his bedside table and squirts a bit in his hand, and then rubs himself up and down to spread it out nice and even and slick. 

As he starts, he thinks about the things he usually does. He thinks about having sex with some faceless girl of his dreams, thinks about her body and her voice and the way she’d say his name, and he thinks about – Stiles.

Just for one fraction of a second, Derek thinks about Stiles. He appears like a ghost in Derek’s mind, and Derek pushes the thought away quickly. He huffs out a breath and pauses, shaking his head, and then slowly starts back up again. Back to the girl, he thinks, and back he goes – same thing. Same girl, same voice, same body, same scenario, but then _Stiles_. 

Derek curses and has to physically force himself to stop. He cannot jerk himself off and think about another guy, he just can’t. But for some reason, even while knowing that he _can’t do that_ , every time he thinks about Stiles, he starts going faster. Instead of stopping, he just wants to keep going, keep thinking, keep imagining.

He’s too hard to stop altogether, so Derek just thumps his head back on his pillow and tries one more time. Girl, he thinks, just the word itself. Girl, girl, girl, hips, breasts, legs, perfume, pretty, eyelashes, skin, and – Stiles. 

This time, he can’t help himself. 

He screws his eyes shut, and there in his mind, is Stiles. He cocks his head to the side and smiles, and he’s on his knees, right in between Derek’s legs. He leans forward and sucks Derek into his mouth, quick and easy and like he’s done it a thousand times already, like they have, together. He moves his mouth up and down, up and down, and Derek fists Stiles’ hair and tells him to take it deeper, come on, he can do it, just a little bit more. 

Stiles looks up at him from underneath his eyelashes, his eyes big and brown, and slides his tongue up the underside. His fingers toy with Derek’s balls, he flicks his tongue against the head, he leans down and kisses the inside of Derek’s thigh. 

He meets Derek’s eyes right as he’s about to take the whole thing in his mouth again, a smirk high on his face. And that, for some reason, is the exact thing that sends Derek over the edge.

He comes alone in his bedroom, ruining his sheets, as he grunts into his pillow. He pants for a second, coming down from his orgasm high, and then he punches his pillow as hard as he can.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he mutters, and punches his pillow again and again in a rhythmic pattern. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He covers his face with his arm, and shakes his head slowly at himself, either disgusted or shocked or just – or just completely unsure altogether how he feels. He came while thinking about another guy. Not just any other guy, either – but Stiles. He fantasized very distinctly and clearly about Stiles sucking him off. 

Which isn’t…he’s never…

Derek sighs through his nose. It’s Stiles. It’s not the boys on the soccer team, it’s not boys in his classes, it’s not boys on television or in movies, it’s not any other boy, it’s no one else. 

It’s just Stiles. Derek can admit to himself, in this moment, in the haze after an orgasm, that he wants Stiles. He doesn’t know if he can admit it anywhere else, to any other person, but he can do this now. He wants Stiles, he wants to touch him, he _wants_. 

This is not good. There is nothing he can do about it.

****

Derek walks into the fountain with both a hope that Stiles will not be there, and a hope that he will. If he is there, Derek will have to – well. He doesn’t know what he’ll have to do. Ignore him? Talk to him? Pretend he doesn’t exist and that he never did?

Either way, he walks in, and there Stiles is. He’s camped out with his laptop and a big book, typing furiously with a pen clamped between his teeth and a serious expression on his face. Derek swallows when he sees him, but doesn’t stop walking. He approaches the fountain and then walks around it, on Stiles’ side, and Stiles just so happens to look up and make direct eye contact with him. 

Instead of unrestrained animosity or just flat out annoyance, like there might have been only a week ago, Stiles just sort of regards him for a moment. He looks at him steadily, a half-confused or calculating expression on his face, and then he just sort of blinks and looks back to his work. Derek doesn’t know how he feels about that. A part of him almost wants Stiles to get up and punch him in the face, or something, if only just to have some kind of an interaction with him. 

Derek huffs and walks up to the counter, where Lydia is standing and waiting for him, clicking a pen again and again. He gets to the register, opens his mouth to rattle off his order, and then he pauses. Glances in Stiles’ direction.

“Can I, uh –“ he starts, and Lydia is already fishing a sixteen ounce cup out for him, likely to scribble his usual order across the side. “…can I get a triple shot,” her eyebrows raise, “cappuccino, er – wet. A triple shot wet cappuccino. Three scoops – no. Two scoops of white chocolate, and three pumps of – marshmallow?”

She looks at him steadily, and then parts her lips. “Are you trying to order Stiles’ drink?”

Derek feels only moderately embarrassed that he’s been found out, but he just scratches at his eyebrow and then nods solemnly.

“I know it,” she says. She’s still got that sixteen ounce cup in her hand, poised to probably just write _Stiles_ on the side since she knows how to make it by memory, so Derek interrupts her.

“Make it a twenty ounce, will you?”

Lydia’s eyebrows raise again, but she makes no commentary as she trades one cup for the other. It takes her a solid thirty seconds to type in the order on the computer, and then she looks right at Derek and says, “that’ll be 7.65.” 

“ _Jesus_ ,” Derek hisses, fishing around in his wallet for a ten. 

Lydia accepts his money, processes it, hands him his change, and smiles with all her teeth. It looks a little less than friendly. Derek blinks at her and then slowly inches away to wait at the counter for the drink, tapping his foot and half-feeling Stiles’ eyes on his back, half-thinking that he’s just imagining it. 

The drink comes up, and Derek snatches it quickly before he can lose his nerve. He turns around, sees Stiles is still sitting there focused entirely on his laptop, and takes a deep breath. He approaches cautiously, swallowing and sort of psyching himself up, and then as soon as he’s within reach, he plops the drink down right next to Stiles’ laptop and straightens back up to his full height.

Stiles looks at the coffee, and then looks up at Derek. He cocks his head to the side. “An apology coffee?”

Derek nods. “Yes.”

There’s an air of suspicion to him as he reaches out, and then sniffs at the lid with a narrowed eye. He glances up at Derek before taking one small sip, and then his eyebrows raise in surprise. “My drink,” he says – he sounds pleased. “How did you –“

“I remembered what it was,” Derek insists, even though he didn’t. Lydia remembered what it was. But Derek, bizarrely, wants Stiles to be impressed. And he looks it, so Derek preens a little under Stiles’ steady gaze.

“’Well,” Stiles takes another long sip and then drops the cup down next to his work, before turning his body all the way around in his chair to give Derek his full and undivided attention. “You are forgiven, almonds.”

Derek clears his throat and shuffles his feet, having to glance away from Stiles’ eye contact for a quick second. “I told you my name is Derek.”

Stiles smiles at him. Really, really smiles, with all his teeth, so that his nose scrunches up and his eyes sort of light up for a second. He’s never looked at Derek like that before – Derek’s heart speeds up for a second, and he feels stupid and nervous and jittery. “Okay, so it is.” 

There’s a beat of dead quiet, with Stiles just looking at him and Derek just looking down at his feet, where Derek realizes that – he doesn’t know how to talk to Stiles. He isn’t sure how to interact with him if they’re not bickering or tossing insults back and forth, and Stiles is just fucking looking at him expectantly.

Derek has always thought himself good with girls. He’s good at flirting with them and getting to know them and making them laugh – he’s good looking and funny and girls _like_ him. 

But here, with Stiles, Derek’s mind goes blank. It’s like the inside of his mind is a notebook, and Derek keeps flipping through the pages, searching for something, anything, to say to this person sitting in front of him – but all the pages are empty. Stiles’ lips curve up at the corners the longer Derek stays quiet, and he knows he has to say something, anything, before Stiles thinks he’s a fucking idiot.

“Is Stiles a nickname?” He blurts out, and Stiles opens his mouth to answer, and then Derek word-vomits. “I mean – it just sounds like – not a real name. Not that I’m saying it’s not – a _real name_ , but it’s.” There’s where his sentence ends.

Stiles looks at him, looks up at the ceiling like he’s trying desperately not to laugh right in Derek’s face. “It is a nickname, yes. My real first name is ugly and gross, so when I was seven I demanded to be called Stiles,” he smiles again, and Derek wants to fucking die. 

There’s another long period of silence, and Derek abruptly thinks _I’ve masturbated to the thought of you_ , and then wants to punch himself in the face, and then wants to slink away from the table, drop his backpack on the ground, and climb inside the trash can. 

“My roommate Erica took a class with you once,” he says, and Stiles raises his eyebrows. “Er – Psych of Film.”

Stiles thinks for a moment. “Is she the one with the nails?” 

The nails. That’s Erica’s identifier. She’ll be thrilled to know it – she spends hours of her time every week perfecting her acrylics and coming up with new styles and colors, stinking the apartment up with nail polish smell. “That’s her.”

“I didn’t know she had a boyfriend,” Stiles leans back in his chair as he says this, so it creaks, and Derek tracks the movement with his eyes like some kind of a fucking pervert. 

“No, we’re not –“ Derek laughs, just at the sheer thought of it. “We’re not together. She’s just my roommate. We just live together. In separate rooms.”

Stiles nods his head.

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” he clarifies further, and Stiles nods his head again. He presses one finger to his lips, but Derek can still see his mocking smile as it spreads across his face. “I don’t - I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Idiotically, he says this. Stiles smiles big again, like he’s in on some private little joke, and then he says, “I don’t have a girlfriend either,” with a particular lilt to his voice that suggests there’s something even funnier about it that Derek just doesn’t get. 

“Oh, cool.” Derek says. _Cool_. 

Stiles taps one finger on the tabletop, and then he turns his body around again to face his computer. He gives Derek a bit of an apologetic smile, and he says, “I’ve really gotta –“ while pointing at his screen.

Derek blinks at him for a second, and then realization dawns on him. “Oh, _yeah_. Get back to work, yeah sure, yes. Okay.” Derek takes a step back. “I guess I’ll – I’ll see you around.”

“Here, most likely,” Stiles says with a wink, and Derek could choke on his own spit. “Or at my apartment I guess.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Derek agrees, frantically nodding. He’s still walking backwards, heedless to his surroundings, so naturally he backs right into the fountain and nearly goes spilling into the water, but luckily catches himself at the last second, flailing a bit and then righting himself. Stiles is still watching him, an open-mouthed eyebrows-raised expression on his face, and Derek clears his throat. “I’ll see you,” he says, waving one hand in the air, and then he all but runs out of the café into the main lobby of the library, taking a sharp turn around a corner so he’s far out of Stiles’ sight.

He leans his back up against the wall as soon as he’s safe, and palms his forehead. That went terribly, he thinks, shaking his head at himself. He can feel the tips of his ears burning in embarrassment, and he can’t even fucking remember the last time another person made him feel like this. When he was sixteen and asking a girl to go to the Homecoming dance with him for the first time, _maybe_. But even then, he was much more composed and confident.

This moment, huddled up against the wall in the library as other kids teem past him, with burning ears and a hand empty of coffee because he ran out of there so fast he forgot he hadn’t gotten any, is the exact moment he realizes that he’s absolutely, completely, and totally, _fucked_.

****

Derek and Scott finish the book for their project – or, Derek finishes it and Scott almost finishes it – and decide to bang out the entire project in an afternoon over at Scott’s place. Scott had almost suggested they go work over at Derek’s place, but Derek cut him off and insisted this Scott’s place was fine, great, he’s okay with being at Scott’s, and Scott had acquiesced.

“I heard you and Stiles made up,” he had said over the phone, a smile in his voice, and Derek had gone red around his cheeks, just thinking about Stiles bringing him up to his best friend and having even a two sentence long conversation about him. “He’s a really cool guy, if you get to know him.” 

Derek does want to. He does. He’s just – he’s afraid. 

Over at Scott and Stiles’ apartment, Derek notices the same things as he always does – Stiles’ backpack, his books, his shoes, his skateboard, and he glances down the hallway to Stiles’ wide open bedroom door and swallows. Stiles is in there, he thinks. Stiles is on his bed, in his bedroom, all by himself, and it’d be so easy, so fucking easy, to just walk down that hallway and go into his bedroom and – what? 

_What_? Derek doesn’t know. 

Instead, he sits down on the couch and makes a powerpoint with Scott, and Stiles never makes an appearance. At one point Derek hears footsteps, and then the bathroom door closing, but that’s as close as he gets. He thinks that he needs to stop fucking obsessing at this point, because, really, what could ever come of any of this? Derek can barely talk to the kid he’s so wound up about him, and all he does is jerk off and think about him, and it’s not like they’d ever actually do anything together. They probably won’t ever even be friends.

Derek is following this logic and agreeing with himself in his head, while Scott suggests they celebrate finishing up with some Chinese and Derek agrees. They order enough food for ten, and Derek wonders if Stiles will come out and eat with them, and then he reminds himself that he’s not supposed to give a shit about what Stiles does or does not do anymore. 

Then, the doorbell rings, and Scott shouts that he’ll get it as he scoots quick and fast over to the door. From Derek’s angle, he can’t see who’s standing on the other side of the door once it’s pulled open, but he hears someone greet Scott, and Scott say “oh, hey,” in a voice much less enthusiastic or friendly as he normally uses. 

The door closes, and someone says, “is Stiles home?”

“Yeah,” Scott says, sounding annoyed about it. “In his room.”

“I’ll just –“

“Yup.”

A guy around their age sweeps into the living room, gives Derek a cursory glance, and then vanishes down the hallway, to Stiles’ bedroom. Derek watches him go, annoyed and intrigued in equal amounts, and when Scott sits down on the couch and turns on the television, Derek can’t help himself. 

“Who was that?” He asks. He’s not usually so nosy. He thinks himself rude for a moment, but Scott doesn’t look put out at all. He just looks at Derek and frowns, more about the information than Derek’s actual question.

“Some asshole,” he mutters. At Derek’s questioning look, Scott sighs and says, as though this is nothing to him, as though it matters nothing whatsoever, “Stiles’ ex-boyfriend.”

Derek is sure, somewhere in the universe, a hole has been ripped clean through it. There are stars and planets being sucked into a massive vortex right now, while Scott just flips through channels and Derek sits there with his mouth hanging open. 

“ _Boyfriend_?” Derek demands, an octave or two too high. Scott looks startled beyond all belief, turning away from the television with his brows furrowed together. He seems angry. It’s not a good look on him. 

“Yes,” he says, sitting up straighter and squaring his shoulders with a narrowed eye. “ _Boyfriend_.” 

It takes Derek a second to recognize where this hostility is coming from, especially from someone as easy-going and nice as Scott, but Derek quickly catches on. He fumbles to correct himself, stuttering over his words for a second as he waves his hand a bit frantically in the air. “I’m just surprised,” he insists, “I didn’t mean – I’m not. I’m not a homophobe.”

“Right,” Scott agrees, narrowing his eyes even farther. 

“I mean it’s – I just personally never think about –“

“Right,” Scott says again, rolling his eyes. “Because you’re straight.”

There’s a beat of dead air. “Yes,” Derek agrees, nodding his head emphatically. “Because I’m straight, I don’t think about people who aren’t. Or that, like, a person could be. But it’s not – I’m not –“

“I know what you mean,” Scott rolls his eyes once more and pats Derek on the back. “I get it. People have the weirdest reactions whenever I tell someone Stiles is gay,” he shrugs, turning to another channel. “For me, I never had to react, because he told me when we were, like, eight. But it’s funny how straight people react sometimes because, you know. Most people aren’t violent homophobes. They’re just awkward and try to either over-normalize it or don’t know how to react,” he nudges Derek in the arm, “like you.”

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, glancing down the hallway once more. “Like me.” A straight person, like Derek. Exactly, he thinks. Exactly. “So they’re – not together anymore.”

“No,” Scott says. “Haven’t been for around six months.”

There’s some more quiet, and Derek taps his fingers on his knee, watching as the channels keep going by, and by, and by. “So how come he’s here, do you think?”

“Oh, who knows why this time,” Scott rolls his eyes and jams his thumb down extra hard on the remote. “He always like to come around and remind us all he ever existed, just for the shit of it. All it does is either piss Stiles off or upset him. I don’t know why I even let him in.”

“Must have not been a very good break up,” Derek wonders aloud, mostly to himself, but Scott responds all the same.

“No, it was not.”

Derek can’t help it – he imagines it. He imagines all the possible things that could have gone wrong between them, imagines that this ex-boyfriend is terrible, the worst, that he’s mean and rude to Stiles’ friends and family, that he never listened to Stiles, that he never called when he said he would, and Derek thinks to himself that he’d never be like that. 

Then, he doesn’t know why he cares. 

Ex-boyfriend emerges from the hallway toting two books underneath his arm, scanning his eyes across the living room once more. Scott looks at him steady, like if the guy even moves wrong Scott will leap over the back of the couch and pounce on him, and ex-boyfriend just sort of looks back placidly, like he’s been getting the cold shoulder from Scott for far longer even than he and Stiles have been broken up.

Derek, meanwhile, examines him closely. He’s tall, and broad, like Derek is. He has dark hair, like Derek does. Derek adds this all up in his head, and the insane, absurd, absolutely batshit part of his brain shouts at him that, wouldn’t you know it, _he’s Stiles’ type_. 

He turns away quickly and focuses on the television, even as the apartment door is opening and closing. 

“Fuck this,” Scott hisses, completely oblivious as usual. “Let’s find something on Netflix to watch.”

Then begins Scott gearing up his xbox and hunting for his controller, flitting all around the room and pushing piles of Stiles’ books aside, muttering under his breath that he just saw the thing this morning. He picks up an odd golden statue at one point and examines it, furrowing his brow, and then he rolls his eyes and tosses it aside with a thump. That must be Stiles’, as well. 

Derek’s presumption is proven correct when Stiles’ voice comes from behind them, sounding outraged. “What are you doing with Clytemnestra?” He demands, and then he bangs on heavy feet over to where Scott had tossed the thing just seconds earlier. 

“What is Clytemnestra doing in the living room?” Scott asks, watching with a twist to his mouth as Stiles picks up his statue and cradles it against his chest. Upon closer inspection, the statue is indeed of a woman, looking appropriately Greek. “You know your creepy statues freak me out.”

Stiles looks affronted, looking down at the statue in his arms and shaking his head. “He didn’t mean that,” he speaks to the thing, and Scott frowns and gives Derek a look while Stiles isn’t looking. Derek looks back, eyebrows raised, and then watches as Stiles meticulously sets her down on one of the closest shelves, reverently adjusting and fixing her position. 

“What did Kyle want anyway?” Scott finally finds the controller, fishing it out from underneath a sweatshirt on the floor by the coffee table. 

_Kyle_ , Derek thinks, with a roll of his eyes. Kyle is exactly the kind of name that’s attributed to douchebag ex-boyfriends. There are likely millions of Kyles all over the world, really, and it’s an unfair generalization, but Derek just – fucking hates the guy, all the same. 

Stiles purses his lips and shifts Clytemnestra one last time, before turning and meeting Scott’s eyes directly. “Just to borrow some books.”

“I thought we weren’t lending him books anymore,” Scott plops down on the couch, muttering this almost to himself. Stiles hears it all the same. He doesn’t respond to it, but just looks moderately peeved or upset for one moment in time, before shifting his eyes over to where Derek is sitting, mostly ignored for the past two minutes.

“Almonds,” he greets, “are you staying for dinner?”

Derek feels uncomfortable and put on the spot with Stiles staring directly at him, so he shifts a bit in his place and clears his throat. “Er –“

“We ordered Chinese,” Scott says before Derek can make an ass of himself. 

Stiles looks pleased with this information, and then he crosses the room and climbs over Scott’s legs to get to Derek’s side of the couch. He makes a shooing motion with his hand, and Derek blinks at him for a second, before he remembers that he’s sitting in Stiles’ spot on the couch. 

He scrambles to shift over closer to Scott, dead center in the middle of the cushions, and Stiles smiles at him all benign. Derek swallows and watches as Stiles folds himself into his corner of the couch, spreading long legs out in front of himself and settling in with a content sigh.

“Don’t things go so much smoother when you submit to my wishes?” Stiles asks, and then he pats Derek twice on the knee. Derek watches Stiles’ hand touch him in such a way that he’s sure if Stiles were really paying attention he’d be freaked out, or at the very least amused – but luckily, Stiles isn’t. 

He has this bizarre thought, like he’s seventeen years old and sitting in homeroom, that Stiles is sitting next to him. Right there. Stiles is _right there_. If Derek were to move two inches to his left, he and Stiles’ legs would be touching. It’s so infantile, but it makes Derek feel somewhat giddy. 

“Let’s watch Bigfoot Revealed,” Stiles half-shouts as Scott clicks through squares of shows on Netflix. 

“Oh, my God,” Scott moans. “No more of that, you know I hate it.”

Stiles nudges Derek in the arm and stage-whispers, “Scott is afraid of Bigfoot.”

“I’m _not_ afraid of Bigfoot,” Scott hollers, and Stiles bites his lower lip to keep from laughing. “But excuse me for not liking the thought of a giant gorilla man walking around in the woods somewhere.” 

Stiles gives Derek a look like _told you_ , and Derek doesn’t know what to say or do. He hasn’t felt like this in a very long time – paralyzed and silenced by the fact that he doesn’t want to mess anything up, or do or say the wrong thing, or make himself look stupid in front of someone else. 

This is the moment that Derek realizes he has a crush on Stiles. It’s not just that he wants to have sex with him, although clearly there’s that if his imagination is anything to go by, and it’s not just that he finds him appealing, he literally _likes_ him. Like, in a grade school type of capacity. It’s humiliating in more ways than one, and baffling and confusing in a dozen more ways than that. 

Girls that Derek has had crushes on, he’s known what to do and say. But Stiles doesn’t think or act like a girl, and that makes Derek’s brain just – not fucking work anymore. 

Stiles and Scott bicker back and forth over what show to watch for another five minutes, until they finally decide on one of those cooking shows that Derek only ever watches when someone else makes him, and then the food arrives shortly after that. 

Like most people when given food after a decent period of hunger, they’re quiet as they eat at first, gorging themselves steadily on noodles and rice and vegetables. Stiles monopolizes most of the chicken and broccoli, which Derek makes a mental note of for whatever reason, and he’s one of those people that actually uses chopsticks and looks a little pretentious doing it, but Derek thinks he likes it a little bit. 

Time goes on, and Derek still has essentially not said a single word to Stiles directly since he came out into the living room. Stiles is just sitting there pinching pieces of chicken and dumping them into his mouth, chewing and watching television, and Derek keeps flicking his eyes to look at him, but can’t say a single god damn word. Nothing. 

It can’t be like this, Derek thinks. Maybe it should be like this, the rational part of his brain acknowledges that – maybe he shouldn’t even try to talk to Stiles, because who knows what would ever come of it? It’s safest to not talk to him, to not move his leg marginally closer to Stiles’ on the couch, to not stare at him like that, to just not with him altogether. 

But Derek, for whatever reason, can’t stand the thought. So he puts down his fork and swallows, and then clears his throat. “Did you –“ he starts, and Stiles turns to look at him while he chews, “…did you get in trouble? For spraypainting the parking lot?”

Stiles smiles as he finishes up what’s in his mouth, and then he shrugs his shoulders, fishing around on his plate for some broccoli. “Oh, sure. They sent me into the dean’s office and gave me some kind of a talking to, and then I had to pay a fine, and that was that.” There’s a beat, Stiles haughtily pinching a broccoli tree. “I heard you tried to get me expelled over that.”

Derek’s cheeks color. “You tried to banish me from the fountain.”

“Okay, true,” Stiles laughs, nose scrunching up, and Derek just wants to grab his face. “I guess we’re even on that front. I wonder what we would have done to each other had you never apologized.”

There are witty retorts, somewhere in the universe, floating around in the stratosphere, that Derek could come up with. In any other situation, talking to any other person, he _could_ , and it would be funny and Stiles would laugh and Derek would have felt all good about himself – but this is not that situation. This is not that situation at fucking all.

Derek just laughs, awkwardly, and Stiles sort of gives him a look like he’s assessing him. He traces his eyes over Derek’s face for a second, and then he looks back down at his food and looks pensive. 

This is not going well.

“So, that was your ex-boyfriend.”

It is getting worse.

Stiles looks at him like he’s got ten heads, and Scott looks at him like he’s a fucking idiot, and Derek just sits there in the middle of them with his plate, and his fork, staring straight ahead. He can’t believe those words left his mouth, and apparently neither can anyone else, and they all just sit there for a moment in silent awe.

“Yup,” Stiles says to break the ice, lips popping on the p. “That was the guy.”

Derek pokes at a pepper on his plate, but doesn’t actually stab it with his fork. He doesn’t know where to go from there, what to say – so he decides on the very first thing that pops into his head. “I don’t know why I brought that up,” he admits, because it’s the truth.

“It’s not a big deal,” Stiles says, and glances past Derek’s head to Scott to share some silent communication about how Derek is surely an asshole and an idiot in equal amounts. “I guess you’re just nosy. I already knew that. You nosed your way into my spots, after all.”

“Just a question – are you ever going to let any of that go?”

Stile smiles at him, genuine. “No,” he says, and shoves another piece of broccoli into his mouth. 

Even if Stiles didn’t appear to hold any of the stupid shit that Derek said against him at the end of the night, Derek went home feeling fucking stupid and dumb and like some big idiot who can’t hold a conversation. The entire thing felt like a bust, and it’s not like he’s ever going to get another chance to be in Stiles’ apartment ever again since he and Scott have finished their project. 

The entire thing wasted, he thinks. He remembers when he just wanted to ignore Stiles and pretend all of this would go away – it just doesn’t seem like an option anymore, is the problem.

****

Erica is parked at the kitchen table eating a frozen lasagna out of its container, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and barely looks up when Derek thumps his backpack down on the ground and pulls up his own chair across from her.

“Hey,” she says, wiping some tomato sauce off of her face. “How was your day?”

Derek rubs at his jaw. “It was fine.”

“Was it?” She raises her eyebrows.

“How was yours?”

“It was good,” she gestures to the kitchen, then the apartment at large. “I haven’t showered or left this place. One of those shut-in days.”

“Those are good sometimes,” Derek agrees, looking down at his hands and then frowning as he glances out the window. The tree that grows right beside their building has branches that have gotten too long – one of them always scrapes against their window whenever the wind blows, and it gets eerie at night, sometimes, when Derek can’t sleep. Lately, he can’t say that he’s been getting very much sleep. 

“You look a little distracted,” she says, eyeing him that way she always does whenever she’s trying to wheedle information out of him. “Matter of fact, you’ve seemed very distracted these past couple of weeks.”

“Well,” Derek starts, leaning back in his chair, “school is – school.”

“School sure is school,” she smiles thinly, and then she says nothing else, poking around in her food. Derek watches her for a moment, and he thinks about how long they’ve known each other. Ten years, give or take. They grew up in the same stupid town in California, far away from any of the parts of the state that people actually like and come to visit, all the way up in the mountains. Derek would say that he hates that town, he hated their middle school and high school days, he despised the people, the atmosphere, all of it. 

He misses it, sometimes. Maybe what he really misses is just being a stupid kid with Erica and their other old high school friends that they don’t call anymore. All the way on the other side of the country, where all the states are packed so closely together it’s like living in all of them all at once, and Derek likes it. But for some reason he can’t stop thinking about just being sixteen again with Erica, and kissing her because she was pretty and because she was his best friend, and her getting angry at him and slapping him in the face because he was just being drunk and stupid.

Derek has kissed a lot of girls in his life. 

“Can I talk to you about something?” He asks, and Erica is immediately dropping her fork down into the empty plastic container and leaning forward across the table, lasering in on Derek’s face. 

“Absolutely,” she says. 

Derek looks down at his fingers, where he’s meticulously rubbing a steady pattern into the table they bought at a tag sale a few months back when they first moved in here. “It’s kind of – well. I don’t know how to put this.”

“Okay,” Erica says agreeably. 

There’s some quiet, Erica waiting patiently, because she knows how long it sometimes takes for Derek to find his words. “So,” he starts, sitting up straighter. “I’m not gay.”

Erica hems over this for a moment. “I feel like I know this,” she smiles at him oddly. “I feel like I have known this for some time.” 

“But let’s just say, theoretically,” he waves his hand a bit in the air, “there was a person out there who – is not a girl.”

“Like a man?” 

“Like a man.”

“I guess there are men out there, sometimes.”

“Sometimes, yes,” Derek stares harder at his fingers. “And let’s say, hypothetically, I – I met this individual,”

“Who’s a man,” Erica says evenly.

“Yes, he’s a man. And I met him. And I – felt weird about him,” he explains this very choppily, but Erica nods her head all the same as if she’s following it. 

“Weird, like…you thought there was something wrong with him?”

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Derek says quietly. “This is about me. What if there’s something wrong with _me_.” 

Erica is quiet for a long time. When she does speak, she clears her throat first and sits up a bit, pushing her empty lasagna container away from her as if it’s in the way of this conversation, in between her and Derek, and she leans over the table, resting on her elbows. “There’s nothing _wrong_ with you,” she says, leaving very little room for argument. “There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to another guy.”

“But it’s –“ Derek fumbles for his words, almost at a complete loss, “I’m not gay.”

“I know,” Erica nods her head, “but there’s a lot of words out there. A lot of words, and a lot of people.”

“I don’t even know if I really like him,” Derek goes on, shaking his head. “We barely know each other. I just – what if it’s just some weird carnal attraction thing, where I’m – I don’t know.” 

Erica hmm’s. “Even if you’re just sexually attracted to him, that’s –“

“I didn’t say I was,” Derek says, but his voice betrays him. He sounds guilty. Erica can see straight through it, and she lets him know it by giving him the eye.

“Look, you like a dude,” she says it so matter-of-factly, shrugging her shoulders like it’s _nothing_ , nothing at all, when it’s been driving Derek fucking insane for two weeks. “You’re attracted to him, you wanna have sex with him, you wanna kiss him, I can tell. I can see it. I don’t think yelling that you’re not gay every time you get a feeling for him is exactly the appropriate response.” 

“What _is_ the appropriate response, please enlighten me, I’m dying to know.”

She holds her hands out and makes a face like it’s so obvious. “Asking him out.”

“It is not that easy,” Derek insists, shaking his head. “It’s not. I’m – I don’t date guys, I don’t kiss guys, any of it.”

“Maybe you haven’t before. You want to now. Obviously.”

“I’m not sure if I –“

“ _Derek_ ,” she cuts him off, and then looks him square in the eye, very seriously. She holds her hands out, and accentuates every word she says next with a single clap. “You like. A. Dude.”

Derek breathes out through his nose, and he stays quiet for a moment. Erica waits, and the tree branch scratches up against the window, and he thinks it would be very easy to say forget about it, just forget it, he was kidding, all of it was a joke, and move on, and never talk about it again. It would be that easy. But then – it’s not that easy. Is it? 

He takes a deep breath. And he lets himself say it. “I like another guy.” And the earth keeps spinning, and nothing changes, even after the words are out there, for someone else to hear. Erica nods her head, and then she smiles. 

“I think it’s exciting,” she says, and Derek grimaces. “No, seriously. It’s exciting. Have you – am I the first person you’ve told?”

“The only person,” Derek admits in a low voice. “Not even him.”

She grins at him, that predatory thing she drags out whenever she’s feeling particularly nosy or bossy or all of the above, and she says, “who is he?” 

Christ, Derek thinks, raising his eyes to the ceiling. He should’ve known Erica would ask as close to first thing as she possibly could. He runs his finger over his pursed lips, feels like a dog trapped in a corner underneath her gaze, and barely mutters, “Stiles,” under her breath.

Erica jumps so hard the table nearly topples over, and Derek fumbles to grab it before it goes crashing down to shatter into four different pieces. “ _Stiles_?” She half screams this, and Derek is opening his mouth to tell her to calm down, but then she’s laughing. She’s scream-laughing, basically, slapping her hands over her mouth to cover it up. “Oh, my God!”

“I don’t see how this is funny!”

“It’s not, it’s not, I’m sorry, this isn’t –“ she has tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, the chuckles still going in full force, and the struggles to talk around them, “this isn’t _haha funny_ laughter this is – I’m – it’s just – Stiles.”

“I _know_.”

“He’s – God!” She tosses her head back and cackles a little bit more, and Derek thinks about getting up and walking away, he really does. “It’s just – of all the men, on all of planet earth… _oh, my God_!” She points her finger across the table at him, as if accusing, and Derek says _what_ in an annoyed tone of voice. “This is why you were, like, obsessed with him!”

“I wasn’t _obsessed_ …” he hisses, even though he knows good and well that even when Derek fucking hated his guts, it was an obsession. 

“You were maniacal! Oh, my God, it all makes so much sense now,” she runs her hands down her face and looks out the window, shaking her head incredulously. “You were having a gay crisis and your mind rejected it so you just – hated him for no god damn reason. This is so –“

“I’d love to change the subject.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” she composes herself, wiping the last of the tears out of her eyes and sitting up straighter, smashing her lips down so she’s not smiling anymore. “Okay. I’m done. I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you, I was just –“ a short giggle, that she tries to stifle. “Stiles is really smart and cool. He’s a little weird, but he’s…God. He’s a lot weird. I just don’t see you two together.”

There’s a lot about the two of them that Derek doesn’t think adds up. Like, Stiles seems more eclectic and scattered than Derek has ever cared to be, and he seems to like strange things and do odd things and be a little over the top. But Derek…likes that. A little bit. “But he’s…gay. Right?”

Erica nods her head very emphatically. “Oh, yeah, he’s gay. He’s pretty fucking gay. I’m pretty sure he’s never even kissed a girl.”

Right, okay. Stiles has never kissed a girl and Derek has never kissed a boy. They could learn a lot from each other, Derek guesses. 

“That’s perfect, then!” Erica says, all sunshine and rainbows, as if life really even works that way. “He’s gay, you like him, he’s single, you’re single. Bing, bang, boom.”

“It’s not that easy.” Derek feels like he’s been saying this same thing over and over again, if not out loud in this conversation, then at least in the privacy of his own head. Because it’s not. It can’t be. 

“It is that easy,” she crinkles her forehead and frowns. “What, does he make you nervous?” 

Derek opens his mouth to retort, but when nothing comes out except a brief exhalation of air, he’s damned himself. 

“Oh, my God.” Erica covers her face with her hands. “He makes you nervous. I can’t take it. It’s so cute I’m gonna fucking scream,” she pulls her hands away and looks at him in disbelief, “you’ve _never_ been too nervous to ask someone out!”

Which is true. Derek has mostly waltzed right up to everyone and just asked directly, and he’s always gotten a yes. There was never any reason for him to be nervous, before. “I’ve never been too nervous to ask _girls_ out,” he clarifies, and Erica blinks like she doesn’t get it. 

“Listen,” she starts, and Derek sighs.

“I don’t know how to talk to him, okay?” He shouts before she gets the chance to finish, and Erica almost starts laughing again but cuts herself off for her own good. “I don’t know what to say to him. It’s like – I don’t know. I get around him, and I don’t know. My brain stops working.”

She presses the back of her hand over her lips for a solid five seconds, eyes betraying the fact that she’s screaming inside of her own head right about now, and then pulls it off with a long exhale. “Ask to see his tattoos,” she offers, and then starts laughing again anyway.

Derek huffs and stands up from the table. There’s really not a lot that Erica can do to help him beyond this point – if Derek can’t talk to Stiles, then he can’t talk to Stiles. Erica can’t be a voice inside of Derek’s ear every time he and Stiles encounter one another, and Derek is a grown man who should be able to handle his own affairs anyway. “Thanks for the conversation,” he snaps, and Erica grabs him by his wrist as he’s stalking past her toward his bedroom.

Derek pauses, and Erica looks up into his face with a smile. “Thanks for telling me,” she says, rubbing the inside of Derek’s wrist with her thumb. “I really do think it’s great. Stiles is great. He’ll like you, once you stop being an idiot.”

****

At the fountain on Monday morning, Stiles is in his usual spot. He’s chewing on the end of a pen and balancing his chair back on its hind legs, rocking back and forth as he stares down at another one of those hundreds of books he has. Derek stands in line waiting to get his coffee, and watches as Stiles pulls the pen out of his mouth and hastily scribbles something inside the margins of his book, and then goes back to chewing it immediately.

Derek looks away and stares dead ahead, up at the chalkboards covered in neat handwriting detailing all the flavors of syrup, and squares his shoulders. He had taken what Erica said to heart – at least the part about how Derek needs to stop being a fucking idiot. Derek already knew that to begin with. After all, he’s the one who has seen and experienced firsthand accounts of him making a complete tool out of himself in Stiles’ presence.

And really, enough was enough. Derek is long past the point where he’s convincing himself he doesn’t like Stiles in _that_ way – it’s useless. He does. He likes a guy, and he’s not gay, but he’s _something_ , and like Erica said, there’s nothing wrong with that.

The point is that he has to talk to Stiles. There’s no if’s and’s or but’s about it. He has to have a stimulating, actual conversation with the guy, or else he’s going to lose his fucking mind. It’s been going on for too long already. It’s time for Derek to get his shit together.

He gets his coffee, turns and looks directly at Stiles, and then makes his way right over to him while trying to make it seem like it’s easy. He pretends, just for the sake of his own sanity, that this is any other encounter with any other person – yes, female – that he would’ve had an interest in. 

For just this one conversation, Derek will talk to Stiles like he’s a girl. It’ll be easy, he thinks, convinces himself, as he gets closer and closer. Stiles is oblivious as Derek approaches, chewing methodically on his pen cap and furrowing his brow down at his text. 

Derek pauses right next to his table, and clears his throat. Stiles looks up, and then he bites down hard on his pen and smiles around it. “Hey, Stiles,” Derek says, and smiles right back at him.

“Almonds,” Stiles greets with a tip of his head. “I see you’re – well, gosh. It looks like you’re having your almonds.”

“I am, yeah,” Derek raises one eyebrow, and then he points to the empty chair across from Stiles. “Can I?”

Stiles blinks at him for a second, and then he seems to realize what Derek means, because he sits up straighter and says, “yeah, sure. This is only half business,” he slides a weathered old bookmark into his book and then closes it, while Derek pulls the chair out and takes a seat, “and half pleasure.”

“What is it?” Derek asks, and Stiles holds the book up for Derek to look at himself. 

“The good old Prometheus,” Stiles waggles it around in the air, and he says it like Derek should absolutely and completely know what book that is, but Derek doesn’t, not at all. He’s not about to admit that out loud. “This is my tenth time reading it. Four times for a class, six others because it’s one of my favorites.”

“So you’re a lit major.”

Stiles shakes his head. “A classical studies major. I read ancient books and then re-read them, and re-read them, and reinterpret them, and write papers on them, and do it over and over until they hand me my diploma,” he smiles. “I can do nothing with it, but it’s what I like. And you’re an architecture major.”

Derek furrows his brow. “How did you –“

“I’ve seen you around before,” he shrugs his shoulders and then glances out the window at the late afternoon sun, “I’ve seen you carrying projects across campus that only an architecture major would ever make.” 

That’s true enough, Derek guesses. But then – “you’ve noticed me before.”

“Sure I have,” Stiles shrugs again and it looks like he’s trying very hard to go for nonchalance. “We go to the same school, and all.”

Even so, Derek thinks. Stiles is a much more noticeable person than Derek could ever hope to be, and yet Derek never noticed him before. Like Erica had said when Derek first brought him up to her, they operate on complete opposite sides of campus. Derek thinks about that for just a moment, playing with the sleeve on his cup, and then smiles to himself, before looking up and meeting Stiles’ eyes across the table. “You like ancient Greece, then.”

“Oh, _like_ it?” Stiles laughs, his whole body shaking with it. “I live there. In here at least,” he points to his head. 

“I noticed your tattoo, the other day,” Derek shoots for casual as hard as he physically can, but it’s hard when he’s remembering how the ink and lines looked on Stiles’ bare skin. “Looked like some kind of a Greek something or other.”

Stiles grins with all his teeth, and nods his head, glancing down at his hands for a fraction of a second. “Achilles,” he says, with some level of reverence. And he must be pretty reverent about Achilles if he went and got the guy tattooed on his body.

“Why Achilles?”

“That’s a loaded question,” he leans his chin into his palm. “I don’t know if you have time for the answer, right now. You can’t get me started on this stuff, I’ll never stop, and then you’ll realize I’m a huge nerd and not worth talking to to begin with.” 

Derek smiles at him the same way he would a girl he was about to ask out, and Stiles’ pupils dilate, just a little bit. “What about the octopus?”

Confusion crosses Stiles’ features for a fraction of a second, and then he laughs, throwing his head back so Derek gets a nice look at his neck. When he comes back down, there are still a few chuckles escaping his throat that he fruitlessly tries to stifle. “It’s the kraken,” he corrects, and then pulls down on the collar of his shirt so Derek can see the bright blue tentacles across his collarbones. “That’s the guy.”

“The Kraken isn’t Greek, I thought.”

“No,” Stiles agrees, fitting his shirt back into its original position. “He’s Norwegian.”

“The Kraken is a he?”

“And the Lochness Monster is a she,” Stiles nods his head. “Why not?”

“So then why’d you get the kraken tattooed?” 

Stiles folds his hands over one another and gives Derek a steady look, with a sort of sad smile across his face, and then he glances out the window again, eyes narrowing as he squints against the sun. “When I was a kid I used to have these crazy nightmares about being drowned by a giant sea monster. Really prolific stuff. My imagination was insane, or at least it must have been because it always felt very real to me, even after the fact. After a while I became, like, pathologically terrified of the ocean? And all forms of water, generally,” he smirks, and turns to meet Derek’s eyes directly, “you can imagine being a ten year old kid terrified of water was sort of – not fun. Not a good time.”

Derek can certainly imagine that – no pool parties, no beach days, nothing. His parents must have gone insane with Stiles at home all Summer without the ability to send him off with his friends to the pool for five hours of peace and quiet. 

“One day my friend showed me this book he had that had a picture of the kraken, and I thought – that’s the thing. That’s the literal thing that’s been drowning me in my sleep for an entire year. I became weirdly obsessed with it – like, you’d think I’d have been petrified and never wanna see it again, but it was just the opposite. Everything I could read about it, I did. All the drawings and stories – all of it. Somehow knowing that it was the kraken and not just some fabrication I made up in my own head…I don’t know.” He shrugs, looks down at his hands again. “It made him less scary. The first time I went back into the water I told my mom I was going to go find him. Ever since then, I don’t know,” he smiles all big, like he didn’t just relay a deep, private part of his personal life to Derek, a person he barely knows, “he represents something for me. You can’t be afraid of something forever.”

There’s only a second or two of silence following this, where Derek is trying to think of something to say but falling short, half amazed and half intimidated by this person sitting across from him. Luckily, Stiles speaks up before Derek has to.

“Can I ask you something?” Stiles asks, leaning across the table just slightly. 

“Sure.”

Stiles’ lips twitch at the corners. “Why are you talking to me? Not that I hate it or anything, but – it’s just. You know. A week ago I think you’d have killed me just to say you did it.” 

“Same back at you,” Derek says, and Stiles nods his head like that’s true, but not the point. Derek has to have an answer of some kind, because Stiles is looking at him expectantly with that serenely calm expression he manages to pull off all the time. There is nothing that will stop Stiles from badgering him for an answer, so Derek has to come up with one. Something. Anything. 

The truth, he thinks, but then he’s not that brave.

“I thought we could be friends,” he offers, to which Stiles gets an odd smile on his face.

“Friends,” he repeats, an odd inflection.

“Yes, friends.” 

Stiles laughs, just barely. It’s more of an exhalation of breath than it is genuine mirth or anything else, and then he smiles. “I’m pretty good at _friends_ ,” he says with a tilt to his head, and Derek clears his throat and has to look away. “So, yeah, if we’re going to be friends – Scott and I are having a bit of a party at our place on Friday.”

“A party, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. A little drink, a little smoke, the usual,” he taps his fingers on the table top and shrugs. “You could come, if you wanted.”

“Okay.” 

“Okay,” Stiles agrees. And then he opens up his book, holds it up, and Derek takes the hint and stands, clutching his coffee and one strap of his backpack as he heads toward the rest of the library, leaving Stiles alone with Prometheus.

****

A stranger pulls open the door to Scott and Stiles’ apartment when Derek knocks. A girl holding a PBR in one hand and a chimichanga in the other looks Derek and Erica up and down for a second, as if assessing whether they’re murderers or just people here for the party going on over her shoulder, and then she shrugs, pulling the door open wider and beckoning them inside.

She turns around and vanishes back inside of the living room without another word, leaving Derek to close the door behind Erica as she steps inside. He scans the party and finds a decent number of people have turned out, filling up the entire living room so there’s nearly no empty floor space for Derek to walk through. There’s music playing, but they must be afraid of getting a noise complaint or being broken up by the cops, because it’s low enough that Derek can barely make out what it is over the noise of three dozen or so people all talking at once. 

“Do you recognize anyone?” Erica asks him in his ear, and Derek looks across the room, scanning every single face, and he realizes that – no. No he does not recognize a single person in this room. He shakes his head to indicate this, and Erica huffs. “It’s the weird literature crowd, I guess.” 

Derek guesses that, as well. All the same, they meander into the kitchen and pilfer some beers, hovering off to the side and trying their level best to not look out of place. Erica does so pretty gracefully, leaning back up against the wall and looking more like she’s _too cool_ to be here than she does like she just flat out doesn’t belong here.

Derek is a bit more awkward, staying plastered to her side and obsessively flitting his eyes all over the place in search of Stiles. He comes up empty for the first fifteen minutes of eating and making small talk with new faces, and then he starts to think that Stiles stood Derek up at his own god damn party – which would be absurd. But it’s not like the apartment is that big, and he has no place to hide, so where the hell is he? 

There’s a bit of irrational and misplaced anger floating around inside of his head while he and Erica talk to a kid who claims he met Derek once in their shared Political Science class Sophomore year, which Derek doesn’t remember but pretends that he does – and then a piece of the crowd in the living room parts for long enough for Derek to finally spot Stiles. 

He’s leaning up against the wall next to the bookshelf where Clytemnestra presides, drinking out of a red cup and talking to another guy in a noticeably bright red shirt. Stiles nods and smiles at him, says something, and then red shirt guy leans a bit closer into Stiles’ personal space and says something back. 

Stiles’ smile goes a little thin and he laughs, turning his head to the side as if to avoid eye contact. Derek is far too interested in these proceedings, even when fucking nothing is happening, and he just keeps – watching. 

Stiles takes a sip, nodding his head while red shirt guy keeps talking and talking, reaching out to squeeze Stiles’ shoulder at one point, to which Stiles sort of angles just a bit away almost unconsciously. He takes a step closer to Stiles, until they’re nearly so close that Stiles is boxed in between him and the bookshelf, nowhere to go, and Stiles looks more than a little bit cornered and trapped. 

Stiles’ eyes flick over in Derek’s direction, and they go wide when they meet Derek’s. He smiles, a genuine one this time, and then goes out of his way to deliver the single grandest and biggest over-the-top wave anyone has ever given Derek before. Derek lifts his hand to wave back. Stiles turns to red shirt guy and says something quickly, turning away and moving his way through the party and away from that conversation. Red shirt watches him go with a frown on his face, evidently put out, but then he just runs his hand through his hair and mutters something under his breath, turning away to go find someone else to trap in his clutches.

Stiles pushes and shoves through the crowd until he makes it into the kitchen, and then he makes a big relieved breath and beelines it straight for Derek. “You,” he starts, nudging a hard and thin finger into Derek’s chest, “just saved my _fucking life_.” 

Looking at him, Derek can tell that Stiles is stoned and drunk at the same time. He has that set to his eyes, the doofy smile on his face, and Derek thinks that he doesn’t mind it that much. “Who was that guy?”

“Oh,” Stiles rolls his eyes and sighs, long and loud. “One of those guys from the LGBTQ club on campus who thinks I’m easy.” 

Derek looks over Stiles’ shoulder and sees that red shirt guy has given up on trying to find someone else to woo and is instead standing there leaning up against the wall, glaring at them both. “Now, why would he think that?”

Stiles smiles with all his teeth, cocking his head to the side and shrugging. “I have no idea,” he says, all the air of innocence in the world. He chews on the straw in his drink for a second, and then seems to take stock of Derek entirely. From the beer in his hand, to the shirt he’s wearing, the pants, his face, the way he did his hair, and then finally meets Derek’s eyes. They stare at each other in silence for a long second, while behind them, Erica seems to have trapped some poor soul in her clutches, yammering on about this that and the other thing in her loud voice. 

“You know,” Stiles starts, standing up a bit straighter and looking down at his feet for a brief moment. “My room is that way,” he points one long finger down the hall, and Derek nods his head. 

“I think I remember that,” he says, actually managing to pull off sounding disaffected, for once in his interactions with Stiles.

“And it’s so loud out here.”

“I agree.”

“This is no place for a conversation.”

“Absolutely not.”

Stiles cocks his head in the direction of his room and smirks. “You wanna come to my bedroom?” 

Derek has been asked this question before, at a dozen different parties by a dozen different girls, and that’s not even including things he got up to in high school. He’s spent many an hour at a party locked up in some girl’s pink or purple or baby blue room, and so even in spite of the fact that Stiles’ room is likely nothing like any of those girls’, he has a pretty good guess of what Stiles wants to do with him back there. 

Derek says, “yeah, I do,” and Stiles leads the way through the crowd, toward where his closed door is waiting. Derek watches his back muscles move as he walks, observes the short cut of his hair and the way his jeans hug his body, and he thinks he’s making a mistake going to Stiles’ bedroom like this, because anything could happen – and he can’t take any of it back. 

All the same, Stiles opens his door and pulls Derek inside by his lower arm, and then closes it behind him. The voices and music and general party sounds all fade into the background, a low hum with the occasional loud laugh. Stiles settles down on his bed, criss cross, and wakes his sleeping laptop up from where it’s perched beside him. 

“What kind of music do you like?” Stiles asks.

“Death metal,” Derek deadpans, and Stiles gives him an unimpressed look, but smiles all the same.

“Come on, seriously. I’ll put something on.” 

“Put on anything you want,” Derek tells him, and Stiles sighs but focuses on his computer screen, clicking around in his Apple music. While Stiles is preoccupied doing that, Derek takes the opportunity to get a really good look at Stiles’ bedroom – when before, he had only managed to get a few quick glances. And last time, he was a little bit distracted by Stiles not having a shirt on to really focus on an of the details.

There are the tapestries and the mood lighting and the bookshelves, all of which Derek had already known about, but seeing all the shelves up close, all the different titles one by one – it’s a little staggering. Stiles has ten copies of The Iliad, taking up an entire single shelf on the bookshelf closest to the door. He has the thing in Greek, in Latin, in six different cover designs, in an original translation from the seventeenth century, all stacked up next to one another in the biggest shelf, like his most prized possessions. 

Derek pulls one off the shelf and flips through it quickly, finding Stiles’ messy handwriting on nearly every single page, his underlining, his highlighting, his brackets around single lines. He bets all of these copies are exactly the same as this one – obsessively pored over more than a dozen times each, littered with his thoughts.

Other than that, his books are exactly what Derek would have expected. Oresteia, Oedipus Rex again and again, Medea, Antigone, and on and on. “You seem to have a thing for the tragedies,” Derek says as he sips his beer, scanning some more titles he’s never heard of but that are all authored by Euripides or Aeschylus or whoever. 

“You don’t even know the fucking start of it,” Stiles half-laughs, and then a song starts playing quietly, but enough to almost drown out the noise of the party outside his door. “I used to put on my interpretations of the plays in my living room at home.”

“I bet your parents loved that.”

“There are humiliating videotapes somewhere, I’m sure,” he sighs, and then laughs into his hand. “A one-man show of Medea. Ironic and pointless.” Stiles leans back in his bed, just a bit, like he’s getting more comfortable, and then he pats the empty spot next to him. “Wanna come sit?” 

Derek should not do that. He absolutely shouldn’t. “Okay,” he says, and takes the five steps necessary to plop himself down right next to Stiles. He lands on something hard and uncomfortable, startling him a bit into almost falling off. He reaches down underneath the blankets and finds the item in question with his fingers, pulling it out and holding it up in the dim lightning of Stiles’ bedroom. It’s another Iliad. Derek should’ve expected as much.

He puts it down next to him on the bed and says, “that’s eleven.”

“What?”

“You have eleven copies of that book.” 

“Do I?” Stiles looks genuinely intrigued by this information, nodding his head and shrugging. “I guess that makes sense. I can’t say I’ve ever noticed.” 

“Why do you have eleven copies of The Iliad?”

Stiles sighs and then smiles, really gently, but genuinely all the same. “It’s just my favorite. You know when you really, really like something, like – a _lot_? But you can’t put your finger exactly on why, or what it is about it, but you just – you just do?”

They hold each other’s eyes for a long moment, neither of them blinking. Derek thinks he knows that feeling incredibly well, has never known it any stronger than he does in this exact moment, in Stiles’ bedroom, alone with him. 

“And, really, eleven copies is nothing. There are hundreds of translations of it, you know? Like, hundreds. No exaggeration. And they all give different interpretations of the same thing, it’s insane to read it. Like, once,” he turns his body so that he’s facing Derek head-on, still sitting criss cross so his knees are touching Derek’s thigh, “I read the Greek and the English, chapter by chapter, back to back. One chapter in Greek, the same chapter in English. It was _crazy_! There are certain words in Greek that we don’t have in English, dude, completely different expressions and emotions, it’s just –“ he pauses for a second, noticing the look on Derek’s face. He palms his forehead and laughs, cheeks going a little pink. “Sorry,” he says bashfully, eyelashes fluttering as he looks down at his hands. “I really, really like this stuff.” 

He must have been misreading Derek’s expression for something that it wasn’t, Derek is sure of that. Derek has never seen Stiles’ face be so open and light and happy as it was when he was talking about that – something he really, really loves and cares about, could talk about for hours on end. He has this thought that Stiles is beautiful, and it comes from nowhere and nothing, just appears in his head, and he can’t say that he disagrees with it. 

That song is still playing in the background, and Stiles finally looks back up from his hands to look Derek in the face. They sit, and they stare, and neither of them say anything. Derek can’t help himself from glancing down at Stiles’ lips, and he swallows. 

He leans forward, just a little bit, and Stiles doesn’t move. Again, he moves inches closer, until they’re both so close to one another they have to shift their eyes in order to see other parts of each other’s faces aside from their lips. 

Stiles says, “what are you doing,” with no inflection, quiet and trepidatious, like he doesn’t want to spook Derek out of it. 

Derek stares at Stiles’ lips as they move, and then he meets Stiles’ eyes. “I don’t know,” he admits. It’s all he can think to say. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

They stay quiet, unmoving, close to one another’s faces, close enough to touch, for what feels like an eternity. Stiles doesn’t pull back, doesn’t shove Derek away and call him gross, doesn’t look at him with annoyance like he had the red shirt guy from earlier, he just sits and waits patiently. No rush, no push, no nothing. 

When it’s been so long that even Derek has to admit he’s not going to do anything, Stiles’ nose scrunches up as he smiles and says, “okay.”

He looks away, the first to move, and then he picks up the drink Derek had forgotten about from his bedside table and takes another long sip. “You wanna smoke a little?” Stiles asks, and Derek palms his forehead and feels shaky. 

“First of all, I think you’ve had enough,” he accuses, and Stiles gives him a lazy smile that only proves Derek’s point, “and second of all, I don’t think – I don’t think that’d be a good idea right now.”

“Okay,” Stiles shrugs. “You want another beer?”

“That, also, sounds like a bad idea.”

“What sounds like a good idea?” 

Derek looks down at his feet. He feels like a coward, or like a little kid running away from his problems, or like – or like he doesn’t even know who he is, anymore. “Going home,” he says in a low voice, slightly ashamed. Stiles doesn’t look at him like he’s judging or anything, just slurps on his drink until he’s sucking at ice, and then thwaps the cup down on his bedside table again and shrugs.

“No one’s holding you hostage, almonds.” 

He hesitates for another moment more, looking around Stiles’ room one last time. There’s a part of him that has no desire whatsoever to leave this place, with Stiles and all his tragedies and his music and his voice and body and face and hair and hands – but the other part of him, the scared shitless part, just wants to get up and go. 

It’s an odd feeling inside of him, he thinks. To know beyond any shadow of a doubt that he wants this person, all of him, all the fucking time, and to also just be so – confused. All the time. He doesn’t understand it. He can’t make sense of whatever it is that’s going on inside of his head. 

Derek stands and moves to walk away quickly, before he does something stupid, but Stiles grabs him by the palm of his hand and pulls him back just a step, looking up at him through his eyelashes and smiling. “Take this, will you?” 

Before Derek can stop him, Stiles is ripping the cap of a permanent marker off with his teeth and poising the tip of it over Derek’s wrist and forearm. In huge black scritches he scrawls his phone number, the tickle of the marker moving over his skin and Stiles’ fingers gripping his wrist turning the moment insanely sexy and intimate. 

When he finishes, he caps the marker and smiles. “Since we’re friends,” Stiles shrugs, “you should have my number.”

“Right, since we’re friends,” Derek says back, and Stiles throws his head back laughing. Derek doesn’t know what’s so funny about it, but even as he leaves the room, Stiles is still laughing and laughing and laughing – Derek attributes it mostly to the weed and the alcohol. But even as he’s finding Erica and asking her if she’s ready yet, he can’t stop thinking about it. 

Since we’re friends, he thinks, shaking his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anyone wondering, the final product will be somewhere around 90 and 100k. Right now I can't give you an exact because I keep writing and rewriting the epilogue and have three different versions of it and can't pick one lmfao but the rest of the thing is completely and totally done.


	3. Greece wasn't built in a day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my ass is chapped because there is a Halloween chapter - except it's the one directly after this one. I'm so fucking angry about it lmfao but I wasn't going to make one chapter 25k just to put the Halloween vibes out ON Halloween. Live and let live I guess haha (and, for the record, next chapter is my personal favorite chapter) 
> 
> But for some Halloweens check out my vampire Stiles fic if you feel so inclined
> 
> anyway this is where things start to get Fun and Sexy

Derek, 2:34 AM : I’m thinking about the Iliad now  
Stiles, 2:35 AM : who is this? My almond supplier?   
Derek, 2:36 AM : Ha. Ha. Ha.   
Stiles, 2:37 AM : what specifically are you thinking about? I wanna know   
Stiles, 2:37 AM : I’ve now warned you three times not to mention this shit to me and you’ve THRICE ignored me, now you have to pay the piper   
Derek, 2:38 AM : Remember Brad Pitt as Achilles   
Stiles, 2:39 AM : in my nightmares, yes, yes I remember it. That’s what you’re thinking about? Brad Pitt?  
Derek, 2:40 AM : He’s just who I always picture as Achilles now   
Stiles, 2:45 AM : I’m thinking about blocking your number right now   
Derek, 2:47 AM : then who do you picture as Achilles?   
Stiles, 2:48 Am : I picture Achilles as Achilles. He’s a god, he can’t appear as any of us common mortals, Almonds. Certainly not Brad Pitt  
Stiles, 2:49 AM : I can’t believe you’ve reminded me of this trauma. I’m so fucking angry now.   
Derek, 2:50 AM : If you had to pick someone to be Achilles, though.   
Stiles, 2:53 AM : nnnrnrnrnnnn FINE if I had to pick some boring ass white male actor – no. I can’t do it. I can’t and won’t   
Stiles, 2:54 AM : and FUCK YOU for trying to make me   
Stiles, 2:55 AM : honestly who would it ever be? Who could ever? No one. Period.   
Derek, 2:57 AM : what about yourself??  
Stiles, 3:00 AM : I feel like that was you trying to give me a compliment or hit on me or something and let me say. I respect the effort.   
Stiles, 3:01 AM : but as we all know, I am Paris.  
Derek, 3:04 AM : A Trojan? Wow.  
Stiles, 3:05 AM : I know. I might as well be a Nazi, right?   
Stiles, 3:08 AM : Can we go back to the part where I said you were hitting on me and you ignored it   
Stiles, 3:09 AM : Can we also go back to you almost kissing me in my room   
Stiles, 3:09 AM : What I’m getting at here is, you wanna come over tomorrow?

****

Derek had gone around and around in his head all day long, coming up with reasons to not go over to Stiles’ place. He had said yes when Stiles had asked, because what else was he going to say? Even across text, Stiles has a particular quality about him that makes it hard for Derek to resist, even when he knows he should.

But once he had gone to sleep and woken up the next morning for class, he had laid there for an entire ten minutes thinking of ways to get out of it. As he ate cereal with Erica and she talked about a guy she met and liked at Stiles’, he was thinking that maybe he could tell Stiles something else came up, or he forgot he has to write a paper tonight for a class and doesn’t have the time. As he drove to campus he thought that maybe he could just not show up and Stiles would get the hint and never ask him over again. 

As he sat in lit class and Scott sat next to him and smiled and reminded Derek that Stiles is out there somewhere _right now_ , he thought that he could – he could. He could say anything to Stiles, he could do anything, dozens upon dozens of ways to not be alone with him. 

It would be so easy to tell Stiles that he doesn’t like guys. It would be the easiest thing in the world – as far as he’s concerned, he doesn’t like guys. Stiles likely wouldn’t even be offended. He’s likely to have experienced the same thing a half a dozen times by now, if not much more than that. He would probably just say “oh, okay,” and then they could just be friends, and it would all be fine.

He could do any of that. He won’t. He knows he won’t. 

Stiles opens up the door to his place, in his usual garb. He’s got on a shirt that mystifyingly reads _HIPPOCLEIDES DOESN’T CARE_ , his hair is a complete mess, and he has his glasses on. He looks brain-shatteringly attractive to Derek, for some reason, and the very first thing Derek can even think to say is, “how bad is your eyesight?” 

Stiles blinks at him, and then smiles slowly. “They’re reading glasses,” he assures. “When I used to read too much, I’d get these crazy headaches. Sort of like a hammer being drilled into the backs of my eye sockets.” He beckons Derek inside, closes the door behind them, so they’re both just standing in the foyer hovering, Derek still clutching his backpack. 

“Let me guess. You kept reading anyway.”

“Yup,” Stiles says, all nonchalance. “Until I went half blind, I guess. You want a soda?”

Derek thinks that over for a moment. “Not really,” he says, and Stiles nods his head. 

“You want something to eat? I have leftover pizza and – well. Leftover pizza.” 

“No, thanks.”

“Okay,” Stiles agrees, and then crosses his arms over his chest. He observes Derek standing there, sort of hovering dangerously close to the exit like he’s about to bolt at any second, backpack and shoes still on. “You want to come to my room?” 

Cutting right to it, Derek guesses. He nods his head, and follows Stiles to the room in question, looking almost exactly the same as it did the night before, only slightly brighter from the daylight attempting to stream in through the blocked out windows. Stiles closes the door behind them, and Derek moves to Stiles’ bed without asking or waiting to see what Stiles does. He drops his backpack down among the blankets and books, and then sits on the edge, biting his nails.

Stiles plops down next to him, criss cross again, and before Derek can say a word, Stiles is grabbing at his bag and unzipping it. There’s nothing top secret in there, at least, and the first thing Stiles pulls out is one of his textbooks for class.

“Design Intelligence Almanac,” Stiles reads out loud in a baffled tone of voice, staring at the front cover with a bit of a furrow to his brow. “This – looks boring.” 

“It’s about as boring to you as the Iliad is to me, I bet.”

“You – take that back – right now.”

“It’s for _my_ major,” Derek laughs, pilfering the book out of Stiles’ hands and sliding it back inside his bag. “you don’t see me pulling down a copy of the Odyssey and scoffing at it.”

“You’re right,” Stiles acquiesces. “I apologize that you chose a boring major.” 

“Har har.” 

“So you like to build stuff? Is that what an architecture major does?” He leans his chin in the palm of his hand and looks genuinely interested to hear what Derek has to say for himself. 

“Buildings are just a part of it,” he explains, and Stiles listens intently. “We – it’s sort of how we create the environments we live in, if that makes any sense. We talk about all kinds of stuff beyond just, you know. Building crazy looking houses. Like, color theory, and making stuff look visually appealing. That kind of thing. We talk about design flaws and how to avoid them, of course. In the Spring I’ll have to literally create the blue prints for some make believe thing I’m building, and then actually build a model of it. So, sure. I build stuff.”

“That sounds way cooler than I thought,” Stiles admits. “So, what do you wanna do? You wanna build cool houses?”

Derek looks at his hands, where his nails are all bitten down and ugly looking, just from all the time he’s spent thinking about Stiles and stressing out about him, and Stiles has no idea about that, none whatsoever. “I want to create something people want to spend their lives in,” he shrugs. 

For a moment, Stiles is quiet, but Derek can feel his eyes on the side of his face, just staring and staring. “That’s amazing,” he says, and Derek shrugs again. 

He clears his throat, and turns to meet Stiles’ eyes directly. “What do you want to do with all your books?” 

Stiles smiles with all his teeth and looks a bit bashful. “Sometimes I think I’ll just wind up as, like, the eccentric English teacher at some high school somewhere.”

“I can literally see that in perfect vivid colors.”

“Right?” Stiles agrees, laughing. “But then, I don’t know. I know I’ve limited myself in picking this major, out of all things, but I just…couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think you’d be a great teacher.”

“That’s what everyone says,” he scrunches his nose up, “I guess they must be right.” 

They are absolutely right. Stiles can’t be anything else but that crazy English teacher that goes off on long tangents about absolutely nothing for half the class period and then spends the entire other half of the class blowing everyone’s minds about something or another. Stiles will be that person that kids still talk to long after graduation, that gets told things like _you made me love reading_. Derek doesn’t even know Stiles that well – but he knows that beyond any shadow of a doubt. 

Derek wants to be close to him more than anything else in the entire world, wants to get to know him entirely, down to the last details, but he doesn’t know how. He draws a blank as they sit there in quiet for a while, Stiles poking around on his phone and Derek sitting there watching him – he should say something, he thinks. Anything. 

The first thing that comes to mind is, bizarrely, Erica’s one and only suggestion. At the time, he had found it entirely unhelpful. Right now, it spills out of his mouth like word vomit. “Can I see your tattoos?” 

Stiles looks up from his phone, moderately surprised it would seem, and then he drops his phone to the side and nods his head. “Right. You only ever got one quick look at them,” he nods his head, “and I was yelling at you, at the time.”

It’s funny to think about how much Derek really thought he couldn’t stand him, when they first met, only about a month ago now in mid September. When in reality, he had wanted him as bad as he does right this very second, but didn’t know what to do with that. It’s scary to think about, almost, but funny all the same. 

Without another word, no hesitation whatsoever, Stiles is pulling his shirt up and over his head, tossing it off to the side so it lands in a bit of a heap on his floor. He looks down at himself and points one finger at the long arrow looking thing sticking out of Achilles’ ankle, and he says, “lots of people don’t get this one, so let me explain it, because it’s so obvious and it makes me so fucking angry. That’s his heel,” he points emphatically at the arrow. “He was particularly proficient with a spear. And he’s Achilles. His Achilles heel.”

“I get it,” Derek says in a low voice. 

“You’re so smart,” Stiles sing-songs, and then winks. “Plus there’s all the rhetoric about how, you know. He was essentially his own demise, so of course, his own spear in his heel.”

Derek stares at it for a long time, it seems. Much longer than is entirely appropriate. It’s huge, taking up most of the right side of his stomach and ribs, and must have taken six or seven hours to complete at the bare minimum. Its details are insane, and it’s unlike anything Derek has ever seen before. All of the images Derek has of Achilles in his head usually involve a helmet of some kind, but on Stiles, he just looks like – a person. A strong ancient Greek person with a spear in his leg, yes, but just a person all the same. Maybe that’s the point. 

“Then there’s this guy,” Stiles drags his fingers along the tentacles of the kraken, and Derek watches them go along his skin and has to swallow thickly, feeling like it’s suddenly way too hot and tight in here. “People always ask me about why I chose these colors when the kraken is – you know. More scary than he is nice to look at. I don’t know, though, I just picked them out and the artist designed it and then – here we are. If you look over here,” he drags his finger over his bare shoulder and Derek tracks the movement obsessively, “at the orange in his eyes, that’s actually where…” he cuts off abruptly, voice trailing off into thin nothing, and then he narrows his eyes.“Are you _hard_?” Stiles demands, and Derek immediately looks down at his lap to see that – yes. Yes, he is hard. And evidently so. To the point where anyone, even someone from all the way across the room, across the building, across the fucking city could tell. 

This is, hands down, the worst moment of Derek’s entire life. And there have been some fucking bad ones, trust him on that one. He feels his entire face go up in flames, and his first instinct is to grab Stiles’ pillow and cover himself up with it, but really, what’s the point of that? The damage has been done. Stiles has seen. 

Fumbling, Derek moves to rise up to his feet, and he says, “I’m – I’m so sorry, I don’t – I didn’t mean to –“

Stiles grabs him by his arm and pulls him back down onto the bed, hard, so Derek has no choice but to flop back down, rattling the frame. “Hey, hey, no, I wasn’t making fun,” Stiles insists, holding onto Derek’s arm nice and tight. “I wasn’t making fun of you, hey. It’s okay.”

Derek won’t meet his eyes. He stares directly down at his feet and keeps his lips pressed tight down together. This is it, he thinks. This is exactly how god wants him to fucking die – this is how Lucifer is going to collect his soul. Via death by humiliation. 

“You like my tattoos, I guess,” Stiles laughs, and the fingers that are gripping Derek’s arm start moving up and down, gently, feather light, and it feels – it feels good. It feels really good. It is doing nothing to help Derek’s erection. Christ, if the embarrassment alone didn’t make him deflate, there’s nothing on planet earth that truly could. 

“Sorry,” Derek says again, hissing it almost. “I’m – I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not,” Stiles says, in an even voice that suggests it couldn’t be anything but the truth.

“I’m really not a pervert,” he insists.

Stiles laughs. He thinks it’s funny. Derek could die. He could. “You can look some more, if you want.”

It’s almost too good to be true, Derek thinks – being offered the opportunity to look at Stiles again, even after all of this has happened. His eyes sort of just gravitate over to Stiles’ body again, but his head won’t move, so all he can see is just Achilles’ heel, and the spear sticking straight out of it. 

Stiles lets out a long breath, and then two fingers grab Derek’s chin and turn his face all the way to look at Stiles entirely. Derek stares at the colors, at Stiles’ abdomen and his collarbones and his skin, and all of it, and he knows he’s only getting harder, and Stiles can see that and can tell, and Stiles said it didn’t make him uncomfortable, and this is really and actually happening. 

“Have you ever kissed a boy before?” Stiles asks him, voice light and gentle, like he’s talking to a spooked animal. 

Derek swallows, so hard his adam’s apple bobs and his throat audibly clicks. He shakes his head no. 

“Have you ever touched a boy before?” 

Again, Derek shakes his head. 

Slowly, Stiles reaches out and takes Derek’s wrist, and starts pulling it over Derek’s own leg, over Stiles’, and then he presses it very gently against Achilles, so Derek can feel the warmth of Stiles’ skin right there, against his fingers and palm. Stiles skin is soft, baby soft, feather soft, until his fingers drag and catch on some of the hair leading down into his pants. 

There’s something he’s never touched on another person before. Girls are so shaved and smooth, everywhere almost, but Stiles isn’t. Stiles has hair all over his stomach and his legs, and some stubble on his neck and chin, up his arms. He’s a man. It should terrify Derek to think of it, but in this moment, with Stiles touching him, Derek can’t think of why it would. 

Stiles uses Derek’s wrist to drag Derek’s hand up and along his chest, toward the long sinewy tentacles of the kraken. Derek’s finger pulls along one of Stiles’ collarbones and his breath catches in his throat, and Stiles notices. Derek forces his eyes away from Stiles’ body to look into his eyes, and Stiles is just looking at him. Not like he’s grossed out or freaked out or anything – or thinking this is weird, what the two of them are doing right now.

He’s just looking. Derek has never wanted someone so much in his life. 

Stiles swallows, and then he drags Derek’s hand back down his chest, down, down, down, to his stomach, along his happy trail, past the button on his jeans, and then he pauses for a second, holding Derek’s eye contact. “Is this okay?” He asks, and Derek has to clear his throat.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Do you want to feel me?”

Derek’s mouth goes dry, but he nods his head all the same. Stiles hesitates for only another second, before he presses Derek’s hand against a slight bulge in Stiles’ pants, and that’s – another man’s dick, Derek thinks. He is literally touching another man’s dick. He has never, never in his life, felt anyone else’s but his own, and it’s almost alien and bizarre for him to experience. 

“What’s that feel like?” Stiles asks him, and Derek’s face gets hot again. “To you, I mean. It obviously feels like a dick, but what do you think about it?”

Derek thinks, long and hard. He squeezes his own hand around Stiles through the fabric of his jeans, runs his fingers along the outline of it, from tip to as close to the base as he can get, and Stiles’ breath goes a little shallow. “I think I –“ he stops, has to readjust. “I want to – but I’m – I don’t know if I –“

“Hey, that’s fine,” Stiles says, and then he gently nudges Derek’s hand away from himself. Derek feels sad at the loss of that touch, but he knows he’s not quite…ready for that, yet. And Stiles is so understanding, and he smiles and doesn’t look like he’s judging or making fun at all. He just points down at Derek’s crotch, where his erection is almost painful, at this point. “You want me to?”

“To what?” Derek asks, idiotically. Stiles’ eyebrows raise, and then he smirks. Without another word, he climbs off the bed, thumps down onto his knees in front of Derek, and runs his hands up and down Derek’s thighs. Derek’s legs spread almost involuntarily, and Stiles fits himself in between them, looking up at him with one of those smirks of his.

“You want me to?” He repeats, a bit of a laugh in is voice, and Derek is boneless. Absolutely spineless, jellyfish, floating off in the ocean somewhere, completely lost. He can only nod. Of course, yes, he wants Stiles to, yes, yes. 

Stiles unbuttons Derek’s pants and drags the zipper down, and then reaches inside to pull Derek out in the air from the opening. He looks up and meets Derek’s eyes as he moves his mouth in close, like he’s waiting for Derek to freak out, or pull back, or do something, but Derek stays stock still. He watches in awe as Stiles darts his tongue out and flicks it against the head, and Derek feels it, and he thinks, _that’s Stiles making me feel like that_ , and it’s absurd. Absolutely fucking insane.

When Stiles pulls the head into his mouth, warm and wet and perfect, Derek’s fingers start shaking. He wants so badly to reach out and touch him, to grab onto his hair, to stroke his fingers down what little of Stiles’ back he can reach, to do _something_ – but he can’t. He’s stuck, absolutely paralyzed.

Stiles makes a small hum that vibrates around Derek, makes him feel Stiles’ voice instead of just hearing it. And it feels like heaven, like some little piece of it come down here in Stiles’ bedroom. The entire concept of a blowjob is, in a lot of ways, disgusting – even right now, there’s spit dribbling a bit down Derek’s balls and it feels slimy and weird, and the sounds it makes are wet and slurpy and a little gross, and Stiles tries to take Derek down too far and makes a bit of a choking sound before righting himself, but it’s like those things sort of fade into the background. Derek doesn’t care. 

He pulls away for a second, lips making a popping noise that he has to know would drive Derek insane, and then he runs his tongue along the underside, again and again, until Derek is a shuddering mess, latching onto Stiles’ shoulder and whimpering. He’s done this before, Derek thinks, and then he thinks, _of course he has he’s gay, he’s probably sucked a hundred dicks in his life time_ , which is a hundred more than Derek can say for himself. 

Something about it, though. The thought of Stiles having been like this for anyone else, at any other point in time – Derek can’t stand it. Even if he’s benefitting from all the experience Stiles has right here and now in flying colors. 

Stiles wraps his mouth around him again and sets up a steady rhythm, using his hand to work at the inches he can’t reach. 

“I’m – Stiles,” Derek breathes, and finally manages to reach out and take hold of some of his hair, squeezing for dear life. “I’m going to come, I’m gonna come, I’m going to –“

Stiles hums again, sort of like an _okay, god ahead_ , and that does it. Derek makes an entirely uncharacteristic noise, a lot higher pitched than he thought himself capable of, and comes down Stiles’ throat. He babbles for a second, lost to the orgasm, because he did the same thing to a girlfriend of his and she got angry at him, so he starts apologizing instantly. 

Stiles pulls his mouth off and strokes his hand up and down, working Derek through the last of the orgasm, and smiles up at him. “No worries,” he says, his voice a little raw. “I’m gay, you know. I like it.”

Derek stares. Something about that – something about _I’m gay, you know_ , completely short-circuits his brain. Or maybe might be more accurate, it wakes him up. Puts the entire situation in perspective, and he’s sitting there thinking about how insane this all is while Stiles wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, and it’s, for some reason, obscene. Completely and entirely disgusting, that Stiles just wiped Derek off his mouth like that, that he just swallowed Derek’s come without a care in the world.

He’s gay, Derek thinks. And then, _I’m not_. 

Stiles is still perched there between his knees, and he reaches out one of his hands to drag it down Derek’s thigh in another intimate, close gesture, and Derek jerks away. Abruptly, he can’t let Stiles touch him. 

He shoves his dick back down into his pants and moves his legs in such a way that Stiles gets forced out, toppling back to land on his haunches, catching himself with his hand behind himself on the wood floor. Derek hastily buttons and zips himself back up, and he sees Stiles sitting there on the ground blinking at him, and he thinks – _another guy just sucked me off. And I sat there and I let it happen._

“Hey,” Stiles starts, like he can tell exactly what’s going on, but Derek is already standing on shaky legs, grabbing at his backpack from where he left it before. “Hey, wait a second –“

“I have to go,” Derek snaps, and pulls his backpack on and moves to walk out the door, but Stiles stands up as well and tries to block him. 

“Hang on, just wait –“

“I – I can’t,” Derek insists, shaking his head. “I have to –“

“Let’s just talk, please, let’s talk,” and he grabs onto Derek’s fingers, and Derek rips them away, horrified. He can’t believe he did this.

He knew he was going to, and he let himself, and he let Stiles, and all of this – God, he’s so fucking stupid. He knew this was going to happen, and he came here anyway. He’s disgusting, he thinks, and shakes his head one last time before side-stepping around Stiles and pulling his door open, slamming it behind himself, and leaving the apartment altogether.

****

Derek has a dream where Achilles comes into his bedroom and stabs him through the neck with that spear of his, eerily one dimensional, almost identical to the tattoo on Stiles’ chest. His dreams have always been somewhat prolific, haunting down to the details, but this one sticks with him for hours after the fact. He wakes up in a cold sweat, dragging his hand across his forehead, and thinks that at least it wasn’t a dream about Stiles. 

In a way it was, but Derek is happy for little mercies. 

He avoids the fountain like the plague, stays far away from C lot, and keeps to his side of campus exclusively. Stiles doesn’t text or call him. The problem is that Derek opens up their text thread again and again, still left with Derek agreeing to come over to Stiles’, and thinks about sending something. 

He could write that he’s sorry he did that and he’s sorry he let it get that far, but he was just curious. And he’s not anymore. It wouldn’t be the truth, not in the least bit, but maybe Stiles deserves to hear _something_ from him, even if it’s a lie. He’s not sure if a lie is the best thing to do, or the best way to handle the situation, but he’s – afraid. He’s been afraid this whole time. He doesn’t know what to do.

It’s not that easy. Derek thinks one thing for one second, and then in the next, he’s thinking completely differently. He tells himself for days that he’s over whatever obsession he had with Stiles. That there was no genuine attraction to him. That he was just messed up or something. He convinces himself of this and ignores Erica’s probing glares across the dinner and breakfast table, and he tries to forget. Forgetting is always the best medicine for anything.

This is him, for four entire days. 

The second he sees Stiles from across the library floor on Friday morning, his brain backflips. He goes 180 in under five seconds, seeing Stiles’ familiar hair even from the back. The way he walks, the book he has shoved into his face, the fact that people are literally tripping to get out of his way because he’s not paying attention to any of his surroundings, and he moves forward so confidently. He’s always known who he is and what he wants, Derek thinks, watching him for a moment, stuck frozen in his spot. 

It’s the easiest thing in the world to convince himself that he doesn’t want Stiles when he’s not looking at him in person. Standing here and seeing him even from a distance…it does something to him. It makes him act insane. 

He lurches forward and nearly takes another guy out in his haste to catch up with Stiles, half-trips into a potted plant but catches himself at the last second, and charges across the floor of the library toward Stiles’ back. 

“Stiles!” He calls, and Stiles turns his head, genuine interest on his face as he scans the crowd of people for the maniac yelling his name in a fucking _library_. 

When he finds Derek, he frowns, face going tight, and immediately turns face forward to start walking again. Derek swears under his breath and jogs faster – he never noticed how fucking fast Stiles walked until this exact moment. It must be those ridiculous legs of his. 

“Stiles, hang on, hang on, hang on,” Derek gets close enough to reach out and grab Stiles’ shoulder with the intent to turn him around, but Stiles shrugs his hand off and keeps right on going. 

“You make a habit out of that?” Stiles asks, out of nowhere – and then they’re in an argument. “Having people suck you off and then running out the door like you’ve never been so disgusted in your entire life?” 

Derek has to speed-walk to keep up with Stiles, who won’t even turn to look directly at him. He’s just charging forward like he has someplace to be, even though classes are over, and Derek is helpless to do anything but trail after him as close as he can. “Look, I’m sorry.” 

“Oh, great,” Stiles snaps. “You’re sorry. Fine. You know, I’m not going to be your fucking science experiment.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Derek says, and he notices that they’re fast approaching the exit. He runs a bit to overtake Stiles, circles around him, and pulls open the glass door leading to the center of campus right as Stiles is walking up to it. He holds it open for Stiles, who just looks at him with this fucking _expression_ – like anger and indignance and shock and horror all mixed into one.

“Are you _serious_?” He demands.

“Your hands are full,” Derek gestures to the books in Stiles’ hands, the top one he still hasn’t closed yet. Stiles rolls his eyes, but doesn’t argue the point any more than that. He walks through the door with his nose in the air, and Derek quickly chases after him. 

“And what I _meant_ was that, you know, you can’t just make me your fucking guinea pig for your straight-dude curiosity peak. Like, gee, I wonder if I like guys at all. I guess I’ll make the stupid gay kid suck my dick and see if I like it!” 

“That’s not –“ Derek growls under his breath and then tries to grab Stiles by his arm again, to get him to just _stop_. They’re practically having a game of tag right there in the middle of their god damn college campus, people milling around in every direction Derek can look. Luckily, none of them appear to be tuned into this conversation, too busy with their own shit to listen. 

Stiles shirks away from Derek’s grip again, so Derek just manages to catch up and walk right next to his side, so they’re shoulder to shoulder. 

“That’s not what that was,” he insists in a low voice, much lower than the one Stiles had been using. “That’s not – I don’t think of you like that.”

“Don’t you?” 

“I don’t.”

“Funny how you act, then.” 

“I’m sorry. I just – it’s just…”

Stiles stops, finally. It’s surprising and abrupt enough that Derek goes a few extra steps before realizing it, and then he skids to a stop and rounds in front of Stiles so they can finally have a face to face conversation. Stiles quirks his eyebrows upwards and purses his lips, an _I’m listening_ face, and Derek huffs. 

“…not everyone has the same experience as you. With all this. Scott told me you told him when you guys were eight that you liked…that you were gay.” He clears his throat, and Stiles just stays blinking at him. It’s better than him storming off in another rage, Derek guesses. “Not everyone is like that. Not everyone can just…be who they are all the fucking time. In front of everyone,” he looks down at his feet and shakes his head, feeling exposed in front of him. “…sometimes not even to themselves, all right?” 

Stiles is quiet for a long time. He stands there underneath the shade of the biggest pine tree on campus, studying Derek and furrowing his brow, but he says nothing. Derek doesn’t know what else he has to say, so he stays quiet for his part as well, until they’re both just standing there with one another as the seconds tick by, absorbing the situation in its entirety. 

When Stiles finally does speak, he prefaces it with a long inhale and a parting of his lips, and he meets Derek’s eyes directly. He has no idea, he couldn’t, just how hard it is for Derek to say no to him when he looks at him like that. “You wanna invite me over?” 

Derek swallows. “I do.” 

“Then do it,” Stiles taunts, standing up straighter and squaring his shoulders. 

“You want to come over?”

“Is your roommate home?” 

“Not right now, no.” 

Stiles shrugs his shoulders, like it’s nothing to him, like he didn’t puppeteer this entire fucking thing, and then he says, “sure.” 

They walk out to the parking lot together, side by side, and Derek gestures to his car like _that’s mine_ , and Stiles nods his head like he remembers it, climbing into the passenger seat as soon as it’s unlocked. 

“Do you live far from campus?”

Derek turns the ignition and pulls on his seatbelt. “I actually – live fairly close to you.”

Stiles’ eyebrows raise, but he makes no comment on the matter. Derek drives the rest of the way to his apartment in relative silence, save for Stiles’ incessant leg bouncing and finger tapping. He doesn’t wear his seatbelt, which Derek finally points out at a red light – to which Stiles just blinks at him and then slowly clicks the belt across his front. 

“You care whether or not my head goes through the windshield at least,” he drawls, settling into his seat more deeply. 

Derek taps one finger on the steering wheel, watching the red light glow, and glow, and glow, frowning. “I care about a lot more than that,” he mutters, and Stiles looks at the side of his face, but says nothing. They do a lot of that – not saying anything. 

He leads Stiles up the steps to the second floor where he lives, fumbles with the keys at the door while Stiles’ eyes stay on him the entire time, tracking his every movement and making Derek feel like his skin is slowly catching on fire. They get inside, and Stiles takes his shoes off at the door, thumps his backpack and skateboard down next to the living room couch, and then stands there with his arms crossed.

Derek trails in after him and does much the same, hovering a few feet away with a frown and a nervous twitch to his fingers. The cuckoo clock that Derek built in high school for Erica’s birthday sits on the coffee table, ticking, ticking, ticking, and then Derek takes a deep breath and asks, “you want a beer?” 

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees with a nod of his head, and then they trail into the tiny kitchen together, fitting through the doorway one by one.

Derek pops open the beers, hands one to Stiles, and then it starts all over again. Derek leans back against one counter, and Stiles leans back against another, and they stand sipping and staring down at the linoleum for minutes on end. The long tree branch scratches up against the window, and Derek turns his eyes toward it – thinking of all the times he’s heard that exact noise before, all the things he’s been doing, people he’s been talking to, and then he turns and looks at Stiles, and thinks that this is somehow the most unreal of them all. It almost doesn’t fit, Stiles in his plaid shirt and his dirty jeans and no socks, standing there in his kitchen. 

“I don’t,” Derek starts, and then has to clear his throat, “I don’t think of you like a science experiment.” There’s a long pause, where Derek meticulously rubs the lip of his bottle with his thumb, hyperfocusing on it with his eyes so he doesn’t have to see whether or not Stiles is looking at him. “…I don’t know what I think of you as. It’s not – easy. To just dive into whatever this is.” 

“Whatever this is,” Stiles repeats. He sounds amused. Derek lifts his eyes to find him smirking just a little bit, raising his eyebrows while he takes a sip as soon as Derek looks at him. “You don’t know what this is? I do.”

“Enlighten me, then.” 

Stiles takes one more long sip, drops his bottle onto the counter with a loud clink, and then he stands up straight. “Kiss me,” he says, like it’s the easiest god damn thing in the world, and makes a gesture with two fingers beckoning Derek over to him. 

“I’m –“

“Come on. Fucking kiss me,” he taunts some more, half-laughing. “I know you want to, and you know you want to, because you’re attracted to me, and you want to touch me and kiss me and be around me, so just – _do that_.” 

Derek stares at him. No one has ever been this forward with him before – girls or boys, in any context whatsoever. They share another one of their patented meaningful but silent staring contests, and Derek sips at his beer one last time, before he puts it aside himself. 

He thinks, as he pushes his body up and away from the counter, that he had never kissed a boy before, and he won’t know how to do it and he’ll humiliate himself in front of Stiles. But then, maybe he’s overthinking it. Maybe he’s been overthinking Stiles since the very first day they met each other, and maybe it’s just about time that he stopped. Thinking, that is. 

He moves forward quickly, grabs Stiles by the chin, and kisses him. 

It’s quick, at first. Derek just presses his lips against Stiles’ and then pulls away, so they can meet each other’s eyes. Stiles had closed his, so they open back up slowly, and Derek looks into them. Up close, it’s like they’re five different shades of brown, dark brown, gold-brown, amber, chocolate, on and on and on, and Derek thinks he could just stare at him and stare at him, stay just like this, never move. 

But Stiles grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him down again – this time for a real kiss. Stiles’ mouth is already open by the time they’re connecting, pushing his tongue against Derek’s lips to get him to do the same, and Derek is mostly helpless to it. 

It goes steady for the first couple of moments. Derek thinks about how it’s really not that different from any of the girls that he’s kissed, except that there’s just a little bit of stubble on Stiles’ neck, and he’s not pressed up against a pair of tits, and Stiles shoves his hips right against Derek’s so he can feel the starts of an erection against his own. 

After that, he doesn’t really think much. Something snaps inside of his brain the second Stiles drags his fingers along the front of Derek’s pants – like the primal side of him that’s been long denied since the first day he and Stiles met bursts clean out of him, unstoppable. 

He shoves Stiles back against the counter and boxes him in, one hand on either side of his hips, and bites on his bottom lip. Stiles makes a gentle sound from the back of his throat, but not a protest, so he kisses him again, harder. Somewhere in the shuffle, Derek lifting his hand up to grab Stiles by his face and angle it where he wants it to be, Stiles’ beer that had been left sitting on the counter gets knocked to the ground and shatters, spilling the stuff all around their feet. 

Neither of them notice until Stiles is pulling off, laughing, pushing Derek’s face away to get him to cut it out for a second. “My shoes!” He says. Derek is baffled by this for a full five seconds – he leans forward to shove his face into Stiles’ neck and suck a hickey into his skin, but Stiles just laughs again and pushes him away. “No, almonds, my shoes will get ruined.” 

“What?” Derek demands, and then finally looks down at their feet. 

Oh, right, Derek blinks. The beer. It’s all over the floor, trailing off toward where Stiles’ shoes are parked by the front door. It crawls across the linoleum like lava, and they both just stand there watching it for a second. 

“Those are expensive shoes,” he goes on, giving Derek a look. “Hundred dollars, give or take, so not Kim Kardashian on the red carpet expensive, but. You know.”

It occurs to Derek that Stiles is asking him to stop this from happening. Derek stares at him for a second, looks at Stiles’ red-bitten lips and his tousled hair and his hard on pressing up against Derek’s, and then he lets go. He moves, rips down a handful of paper towels from the roll attached to the wall, and drops the squares onto the end of the puddle so it will travel no more. Then, for good measure, he walks the extra five feet to where Stiles’ shoes are, and picks them up to place them on the carpet, far far away from the evil beer spill. 

When he manages to make it back into the kitchen, he finds Stiles leaning back against the table, arms crossed over his chest, one eyebrow raised. From this angle and the way he’s got himself situated, his hard-on is even more obvious. It’s practically bulging out of his pants, but he doesn’t look embarrassed, not at all. He just looks steadily at Derek, all the nonchalance and sexiness in the world, and says, “you know, I have another tattoo you haven’t seen yet,” with just the right amount of teasing. 

Derek doesn’t even think about it this time. He crosses the room in three steps or less, takes Stiles by his hips, and shoves himself right up against Stiles – Stiles opens up his legs, letting Derek fit his hips in between them, and there’s the distant sound of the table hitting the wall all the way across the room as they start necking all over again. Stiles wraps one arm around Derek’s neck and steadily works his hips against Derek’s front, while Derek kisses up and along Stiles’ jawline, his neck, his cheeks, and neither of them take the time to wonder how the hell they managed to get this table all the way across the fucking room.

Stiles is making small sounds in Derek’s ear, rubbing himself against Derek’s leg, but it can’t even be that great – with two layers of clothing between his dick and the friction, not even mentioning the other two layers between Derek’s skin and his own. He must be pretty far gone, Derek has the presence of mind to think – but then, Derek is definitely all the way far gone, so he can’t complain about it. 

Finally, Derek reaches down to unbutton Stiles’ pants, almost reaches his hand inside to grab at his dick right then and there, but then he stops. He pulls his mouth away from Stiles’ neck and breathes into his hair for a second, while Stiles just grabs him by his belt and tries to pull him in closer. “Wait,” he says, pants really, “wait, we can’t do this –“

“ _Fuck_ you,” Stiles hisses, probably right about to go off on another one of his rants about this that or the other thing, but Derek cuts him off.

“I mean we can’t do this in here.”

“Huh?” Stiles finally stops moving, pulling away to give Derek a furrowed brow. 

“I can’t have sex with you in my kitchen,” he says like it’s so fucking obvious, and Stiles at least looks like he understands, but isn’t happy about it. He kicks his legs a few times, bites his bottom lip, and then looks Derek in the face.

“Take me to your bedroom,” he offers, and Derek moves like he’s going to turn and walk away, but Stiles grabs him by his belt again, pulling him in hard. “I mean, pick me up, and take me.” 

Derek is skeptical. Thin or not, Stiles is still a fully grown man. 

“You’re big and strong, _riiigghtt_?” He has on a tone of voice that suggests he’s mocking him, or at the very least trying to use Derek’s sense of masculinity against him. “Come on, pick me up and carry me to your bedroom and make me come.” 

Whatever Stiles had meant to do, it works. Stiles wraps his arms around Derek’s neck, curves his legs around his hips, and Derek uses the bottoms of Stiles’ upper thighs to lift him up and off the table. Either way, Stiles had been right. He definitely weighs more than a female would, just from the sheer size of him alone, but he’s mostly skin and bones, when it comes down to it.

Stiles laughs, almost maniacally, as Derek hefts him away from the table and takes him down the hallway. He has to shoulder his door open, and he does it just a little bit too hard, so the door slams against the opposite wall as they go tumbling inside, and Stiles is laughing again. 

Derek dumps him down onto his unmade bed, which is luckily empty of books or other sharp objects, unlike Stiles’. Stiles looks up at him for a moment, legs wide open, grinning, and then he sits up and pulls his shirt up and over his head. There’s the kraken, and Achilles, and Stiles’ chest moving up and down with his heavy breathing. Then, he meets Derek’s eyes, as if to say _watch this_ , and unzips his pants. They’re already unbuttoned from Derek’s doing in the kitchen, so he just slides them off down his legs, leaving them to slip to the ground. His legs are long, and hairy, and Derek can only stare at him for a moment. 

Then, he pushes his boxers down his thighs, and Derek sees the other tattoo Stiles had mentioned earlier. It’s on his upper, _upper_ thigh, something only anyone who were fucking him would be able to see, pressed to the inside so he has to open his legs for someone to get a good look at it. It’s a small paragraph, written in what looks like Greek, ancient Greek at that, the dark characters thick and carefully carved into his skin. 

Derek can’t help himself. He reaches down and rubs his fingers along the letters, prompting Stiles into opening his legs up even more in invitation, and breathes out through his nose. “This is beautiful,” he says honestly, because it is. He doesn’t even know what it says, but in this moment, it doesn’t matter. 

Stiles blinks up at him, his face looking very serious for a moment, before he smiles again and asks, “do you think I’m beautiful?”

That’s an easy one. It’s probably the only easy thing about this entire situation. “Yes,” he says, thumbing along the tattoo just one more time before he lets his hand just rest against Stiles’ bare skin. 

Stiles grins at him, and then he picks up Derek’s hand to move it away from his thigh and up to his mouth. He licks Derek’s palm, one long stripe from wrist to the tip of his middle finger, and then he salivates again and does it over. Derek stands and watches in silent awe as Stiles licks Derek’s hand again and again, looking for all intents and purposes like a cat, running his tongue inbetween the cracks in Derek’s fingers and meeting his eyes as he does so, a smirk curling at the edges of his lips. 

When he deems Derek’s hand as wet enough, he moves it down in-between his legs and meets Derek’s eyes, waiting for some kind of indication that Derek is uncomfortable most likely. But Derek moves his hand of his own accord, the rest of the way to Stiles’ cock leaking pre-come onto his stomach, and takes a hold of it himself. He strokes once, cautiously, and Stiles’ hips move into the touch.

He does it again, this time more deliberately, and Stiles huffs a breath and bites his lip. For a few moments, he’s just experimentally working Stiles up and down, up and down, trying different ways of doing it, twisting his hand like this or running just one finger along the underside, until finally Stiles grabs him by his wrist and smiles at him. “Don’t overthink it,” he says gently, no real judgment in his voice. “It’s just a handjob. You’ve given yourself probably hundreds in your own lifetime –“

“Thousands probably,” he corrects in a low voice, and Stiles laughs. 

“An honest man,” he bucks his hips into Derek’s hand and sighs. “Come on, please?” 

Derek can only do as Stiles wants. So he puts one hand on Stiles’ bare shoulder, right on top of the kraken’s big eye, and starts working Stiles in a steady rhythm, the same he would if he were just touching himself alone in his bedroom. Stiles seems to respond to it very well – dropping his head back in an open-mouthed moan, his throat long and bare and perfect. Derek has to lean down and kiss him there, so he does. 

Stiles grabs onto Derek’s arm and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, panting heavy and wet, and then he says, “you’re so fucking sexy,” and Derek almost can’t believe he could even think that, right now. While Stiles is there, naked and tattooed and wantonly moaning, skin all flushed and lips all kiss-ruined, he can even think about what Derek looks like. Derek still has all his clothes on, for Christ’s sake. 

Stiles’ grip on Derek’s arm tightens and his noises go slightly more higher pitched. “I’m close,” he says, and then buries his face into Derek’s arm, the one that’s currently working on giving him an orgasm. He kisses Derek’s elbow, his upperarm, and then presses his cheek right up against it, hissing his breaths out like they hurt. “I’m – yeah, right there – fuck –“

And Stiles comes on a gentle squeak, something unbelievably cute and innocent that Derek almost gets distracted and nearly stops – but luckily, he keeps going, and Stiles rides out his orgasm with some more gentle whimpering. He finishes off by taking Derek’s hand off of himself and locking their fingers together, breathing steadily. He’s come all over Derek’s hand, the one he’s currently holding and not giving a fuck about it apparently, and a bit on himself and the bed. Both of them are apparently heedless to this, at the moment. 

Some amount of time passes, and then Stiles reaches out and paws at the front of Derek’s pants, where he’s still rock hard and wanting for it. He looks up and meets Derek’s eyes with a sly grin, cocking his head to the side. “That’s interesting,” he says.

“Is it?”

“I’m fascinated, personally,” he lets go of Derek’s hand, and then scoots forward on the bed a bit, until he’s perched right at the edge of it, feet on the floor. He pulls open the button and undoes the zipper, and then he looks up into Derek’s face and grins. “Try not to go running for the hills the second you jizz this time, okay?”

“Ha ha,” Derek mutters, watching Stiles pull his dick free, lick his own lips, and then gently stroke at the head with two fingers. He watches as Stiles moves his mouth closer, opening it up after wetting his lips again, and then Derek takes Stiles by his chin to stop him, forcing Stiles to look up at him again. “So you’re not…” he starts, and Stiles waits expectantly. It’s a little ridiculous, his face inches away from Derek’s dick, but Derek doesn’t care. “…am I the only one who’s –“

“Are you asking me if we’re gonna be exclusive?”

“I didn’t say exclusive,” he says quickly, shaking his head. “I just – I just want to know if…we don’t have to be like boyfriends. Just…”

“Just?” Stiles raises an eyebrow. 

Derek thinks about Stiles’ ex-boyfriend, and the guy in the red shirt from the party at his house, and the thought of either of them getting to see that tattoo on Stiles’ inner thigh, or getting to see him completely bared like this…it makes him almost angry. “…just don’t do this with anyone else.”

“So you’re saying you and I,” he gestures between them with his free hand, “we’re gonna keep on doing this.”

“I’d like to,” Derek says, slowly. 

Stiles shrugs. “Then you don’t do this with anyone else either.” 

“Okay,” he agrees easily. 

And then that’s it.

****

Stiles, 4:54 AM : awake???  
Derek, 4:56 AM : Sadly, yes.   
Stiles, 4:57 AM : talk to meeee, I can’t sleep, I keep thinking about my paper   
Derek, 4:57 AM : Isn’t it just on The Frogs?? Which you’ve read ten thousand times?  
Stiles, 4:59 AM : I’ve also written about it ten thousand times as well, which is half of the stress   
Stiles, 5:00 AM : The more times I write on any of these the more self-conscious I get about interpretations and shit. Like, what if I’m just parroting what myself and everyone else has been saying for a thousand years?  
Derek, 5:02 AM : isn’t that just what your entire major even is   
Stiles, 5:03 AM : Okay TRUE. But I’m still stressed idk. I wanna graduate lmao   
Derek, 5:04 AM : I’m pretty sure your paper is fine and you’ll get an A on it.  
Derek, 5:05 AM : what’re you doing otherwise?  
Stiles, 5:06 AM : oh you’re trying to initiate sexting   
Derek, 5:07 AM : I’M LITERALLY NOT  
Stiles, 5:08 AM : Okay. I’m in bed, all alone…  
Derek, 5:09 AM : ):   
Stiles, 5:10 AM : what are YOU doing? How come you’re not asleep?  
Derek, 5:12 AM : I’m thinking about you   
Stiles, 5:13 AM : shut up lmao  
Derek, 5:13 AM : I’ve been having weird dreams about you, honestly   
Stiles, 5:14 AM : ??   
Derek, 5:16 AM : Mostly about Achilles coming into my room and killing me, it’s the weirdest thing. Idk I’ve stopped trying to analyze it.   
Stiles, 5:17 AM : LMFAO  
Derek, 5:17 AM : It’s not funny it freaks me out   
Stiles, 5:18 AM : It is so funny it’s hilarious. My tattoo…it haunts you…  
Derek, 5:18 AM : Har har  
Stiles, 5:19 AM : don’t you have class in like, 4 hours   
Derek, 5:20 AM : Yes. Sadly again   
Stiles, 5:21 AM : well, you can’t sleep now, can you?   
Derek, 5:22 AM : I probably won’t  
Stiles, 5:23 AM : well you’re awake, I’m awake…  
Stiles, 5:24 AM : you could come over   
Derek, 5:25 AM : Could I?  
Stiles, 5:26 AM : I just invited you, so yes, you could.

****

Stiles opens up the door to his apartment and immediately puts his finger to his lips, gesturing behind himself into the relative darkness behind him. “Scott is asleep,” he stage whispers, and then pulls Derek in by the shoulders. Once they’re both inside, he slowly, slowly, slowly, closes the door, making fantastically pained facial expressions every time the thing even so much as slightly creaks, until it closes with a final snap and lock. 

“I figured,” Derek says in his normal speaking voice, and Stiles nearly pulls a muscle gesturing for him to quiet down. “It’s not even seven AM yet,” he goes on, whispering just to make Stiles relax. “What is he, an incredibly light sleeper or something?” 

“The lightest,” Stiles whispers back, taking him by the shoulders again and leading him off down the darkened hallway. He tiptoes as he goes, so Derek rolls his eyes and does the same, until they’re herded into Stiles’ bedroom and the door is closed. The room is the same as always, lit up moodily by Stiles’ string lights, his laptop open and playing music softly. “One time, it was three in the morning and I making mac and cheese,”

“Naturally.”

“…and Scott woke up and yelled at me for the entire box. Like, I ate the entire box of macaroni and cheese before he finished being angry.” Stiles sits down on his bed and puts his computer in his lap, so Derek sits down next to him and folds his hands in his lap, watching while Stiles tips and taps away. “What kinda music do you like?”

“You’ve asked me that before.”

“And I never got an answer,” he taps his temple and smirks. “Inquiring minds wanna know.” 

Derek gestures for Stiles to hand him the laptop, which Stiles does with a raised eyebrow, and Derek is greeted by the sight of Stiles’ music library on itunes. He scrolls through for a minute with a furrowed brow, and then starts scrolling faster and faster, until he sighs and says, “what is all this shit?”

“I listen to a lot of instrumental and classical,” Stiles says. “Good for reading and writing. Maybe not for seven AM booty calls.”

“Oh, is that was this is?” Derek finally finds a band he recognizes and double clicks on his favorite album until it starts. 

“Well, actually,” Stiles takes the laptop out of Derek’s hands and puts it on the bed beside them, criss crossing his legs and turning to face Derek directly. He smiles, and then raises his eyebrows, and it reminds Derek of the look he had given him when they first met – the one that had made Derek think of a lemur. “You wanna get stoned?”

Derek considers that for a moment. It’s been a decent amount of time since the last time he did anything of the sort, and he used to from time to time. Architecture is, really, just an art major by any other name when it all boils down to it, so his friends were all art major types who – well. Did shit like that. “Two and a half hours before I have to be in class?”

“Oh, that’s plenty of time,” Stiles shrugs this off. “No peer pressure, though.”

He guesses that’s pretty accurate – two and a half hours should be just about enough to get stoned, and then come down somewhere right around the time he’ll be walking into his first class. He’ll likely be drowsy and look like he was doing exactly what he was – but, then again, he doesn’t remember ever watching the clock like a hawk whenever he’d smoke before, so he really has nearly no frame of reference for how long it takes to come down. 

“Sure, okay,” Derek agrees, and Stiles smiles at him. 

“Oh, you’re in for a treat,” Stiles leans back and rifles around through his bedside drawer, fingers fumbling through various knick knacks and books, until he comes back up with two moderately large cookies wrapped in individual little Ziploc baggies. “Now, I couldn’t get any almond cookies, but –“

“I just like almonds a little bit,” Derek interrupts before he can go on, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know why you think I shove them up my ass every morning.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Stiles dead-pans as he drops one of the cookies into Derek’s lap, “For you.”

“You got me a whole cookie?” Derek picks the thing up with one finger and examines it. It looks like a regular chocolate chip cookie, he guesses. 

“Sure, sure. I love to share.” Stiles unbags his, so Derek follows his lead. He watches Stiles break his in half, and put the other half back inside his baggie, so Derek does the same as well. “Have you ever done edibles before?”

“Once. At a party. I think.”

“You think,” Stiles smiles and shakes his head. “That’s how I know you really did – you can’t even remember it.” 

Derek holds his half of a cookie in between his thumb and forefinger, waiting and watching for Stiles to take the first bite. He does, and then Derek bites into his own. He chews for a moment, and then takes a second bite, and then another. He swallows it all down, meets Stiles’ eyes, and says, “this tastes weird.”

“It’s got, like, a cup of ground hash in it,” Stiles laughs. “It’d be weirder if it didn’t taste weird. I’d demand my money back.” 

“Who do you even buy this stuff from?” Derek finishes his half, while Stiles still has two more bites to go. 

Stiles swallows what he has left in his mouth. “You know that kid that hangs out around the other coffee place? The one with the huge camo backpack that tries to hand out pamphlets for his yoga class?” 

“Not that guy,” Derek shakes his head. “Please tell me not that guy.”

“It’s that guy. You know what’s in that backpack of his?” He holds the last bite of his cookie up with a raised eyebrow. 

Derek blinks at him, befuddled. “He just walks around with a completely suspicious camouflage backpack full of cannabis products.” 

“The thing is, he gets away with it,” Stiles finishes his cookie half and then wipes his hands on his pants. “A weird guy, a weird backpack, people don’t ask questions. You know?” 

Derek guesses he never really suspected anything was in that backpack of his all the times he would see him – aside from, briefly, a bomb or something. He’s the type of guy who just lurks around and zeroes in on people as they leave with their coffee, cornering them and asking them questions about their anxiety and stress levels, and have they heard about the benefits of yoga on mental health, and on and on. Weird guy, yes, but Derek can’t say he ever suspected of him of being the on-campus drug aficionado. Derek would’ve thought he didn’t have the guts for it. 

“Okay,” Stiles leans back into his pillows, putting his hands on his stomach and blinking. “Now we wait.” 

Derek taps his finger on his knee, looks around Stiles’ bedroom, and sighs through his nose. “Did your Iliad collection get bigger?”

“One book bigger.” Stiles says, leaning forward again now that the conversation has taken a turn that interests him a little too much. “My dad sent me a limited edition reprint. It’s bound in leather and shit, it’s wild.” 

“Was it your birthday or something?” 

“Nope, I’m just his favorite son. My birthday is in February. I’m an Aquarius,” he explains, as if it matters, and then he leans his chin in his palm and asks, “what’re you?” 

“A Leo.”

“August?”

“Yes.”

“That makes sense,” Stiles nods his head, almost sagely, with a very serious expression on his face – as if they’re discussing politics or something. “I can see that.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well,” Stiles hems over that for a moment, moving his head from side to side as if swishing some information around in his head again and again. “I guess I don’t know you very well, so it’s hard to make a concrete judgment.”

Derek thinks it’s insane, to hear that out loud. That he and Stiles don’t really know each other that well – it’s true, of course it is. They’ve known each other since early September, and it’s only mid-October now. It hasn’t even been two months. In terms of their star signs and what traits they have and where they fit on the Meyers Briggs scale or whatever the hell, they don’t know each other at all.

In other ways, Derek would say that they know each other almost too well. Yes, they’ve been intimate with one another and Derek has ran his fingers all over that tattoo on Stiles’ thigh, a place he bets not many others have been before, but it’s more about a situational feeling. How Derek has never been in this situation, like this, with anyone else ever before. He doesn’t know if Stiles sees that or gets it, but Derek certainly does. 

“But I can definitely see you being a Leo. Now that I know I’ll start noticing things you say or do and be like, oh, right. That’s a Leo.” 

“And I’ll do the same with you and Aquarian stuff.”

Stiles snorts. “You know _dick_ about Aquarians. I can tell just from looking at you. There’s a Leo thing right there. You think you know everything when you know nothing all the time.” 

“Jesus,” Derek half-laughs. “I guess you take it seriously.”

“No, no,” Stiles waves him off. “I just think it’s fun. I like personality stuff. I’m a psych minor, you know.” Abruptly, he’s snapping his fingers and standing up from the bed, a little jerkily, nearly knocking his laptop over the edge. “You know what we need? Milk.” 

“Right, milk and cookies,” Derek agrees. 

“Don’t do anything crazy in here while I’m gone,” he says as he inches his way through his door slowly. He holds eye contact with Derek for as long as he can, until the door closes with a soft click behind him. Derek chews on the edge of his thumb and then checks his phone for the time – it’s a little after seven now. Derek wonders what time Scott usually wakes up, or at least what time he wouldn’t be annoyed about being woken up. The early morning gray light is just starting to attempt to shine through Stiles’ tapestries, casting the room in an eerie shade of blue. 

Derek feels nothing. Absolutely and literally nothing. Fifteen or twenty minutes, at least, have gone by since they ate their cookie halves, and Derek thinks Stiles was already starting to feel it just from the things he was saying and how he was acting. Maybe, he thinks, since Stiles is thinner, he gets stoned faster and easier on just one half of a cookie. Maybe, and this is a decision that would live to go down in the history books, he needs to eat an entire cookie to get the full effect. 

He unwraps the second half of his cookie and munches on it quickly, wiping the crumbs off of his lap. It’s another two or so minutes before Stiles is sliding back in through the door like a weasel, shutting the door with his foot and then turning around to hold up two glasses of milk. One he deposits on his bedside table and the other he hands off to Derek, who takes it and immediately glugs down a huge sip. Half the glass is gone by the time he’s done, while Stiles just sips slowly at his own and then wipes at his mouth with the length of his forearm. 

There’s a brief pause, Derek putting his glass on the window sill, Stiles nodding along to the music still playing behind them, and then Stiles smiles at him. Derek smiles back, because why not – and Stiles must take it as an invitation, because he leans forward and kisses Derek gently on the lips. 

Derek kisses back, putting one hand on Stiles’ chest. It’s not a kiss leading up to anything, Derek can tell – it’s just a kiss. Apparently they’re doing that, now. Derek is semi-freaked out by it, if he’s being honest with himself, but then again he can’t say that he minds it that much, which is another source of confusion altogether. 

As soon as they pull apart, Stiles takes him by his chin as if forcing Derek to look him in the eyes no matter what happens, and he says, “so you’ve never been with a guy before?” 

It was only a matter of time before this conversation came up, Derek guesses. But still, now that it’s here, he must admit he dreads it more than a little bit. “I – I like girls. Mostly. I guess.”

Stiles cocks his head to the side. “Mostly.”

“I’ve only ever – been with girls. A lot of girls.”

“Right, right,” Stiles nods his head, a bizarre smile crossing his face. The cookie must be starting to work its magic. “You’re so big and hot and everything, the girls just flock to you like seagulls for a fry.”

“Pretty much.”

Stiles snaps his fingers. “There’s a Leo trait right there. Arrogance.” 

“It’s just being honest,” he shrugs.

Stiles snaps again. “It continues. You’re such a fucking Leo. But let’s get back to the topic of how you only like girls.”

“I didn’t say –“

The conversation was likely to have been an interesting one. Stiles and Derek, stoned in Stiles’ bedroom drinking milk and having a conversation about Derek’s sexuality that he’s been actively avoiding for weeks now while an Ariana Grande song that came up on Stiles’ shuffle plays behind them. But, right before Derek can even finish his sentence, Stiles’ eyes shift down just enough to spot the empty Ziploc bag where Derek’s other cookie half had been, and he, literally, grips Derek’s shoulder in a vice and screams. 

“Oh, my God!” 

“What?” Derek blinks at him, startled beyond all belief. He’s suddenly paranoid, looking over his shoulder and all over the room like he’s going to find an intruder of some kind.

“You didn’t,” he says, and then moves his hands up to Derek’s shoulders and shakes him hard, once. “Please say you didn’t.” 

“What?”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He stands up from his bed, holds his hands out, and again, “okay. Okay, okay, okay. Let me ask you something – what’s your tolerance like?” 

“My what?” Derek laughs. Stiles looks at him like he’s seeing a three headed dragon, and then Derek has to cover his mouth to keep from laughing again.

“When’s the last time you got high? Be honest. This is not the fucking time for you to lie just to – just to whatever!” 

“I –“ Derek starts, and then he squints as he tries to remember. For some reason, he literally can’t. “Six months? Ballparking. That’s not a word.” 

“Oh, my God.” Stiles palms his forehead, and then he starts to pace. Back and forth, back and forth, across his tiny bedroom – so four steps in either direction. It looks absurd. Derek can’t help himself. He starts laughing again, watching as Stiles burns a hole in his floor just traipsing over the same four feet of space again and again. 

Derek is about to ask what all the hubbub is about, while laughing about the word hubbub, and then Stiles’ door is being pushed open rather loudly, startling Derek into jumping up like he’s about to be shot. Stiles turns around himself, face ashen pale, and there Scott is in the doorway. His hair is all mussed from sleep, his eyes half squinted shut, still in his pajamas. He looks at Derek steadily, and Derek looks back with his mouth open as a slow smile spreads across his face – it’s just – so – funny. 

“What the hell,” Scott starts, “is going on,” another dramatic pause, “at not even eight o’clock,” one more pause, “in the morning.” 

Derek thinks that Stiles and Scott are about to get into a fight, and he has this sense, this bizarre sense, that it’s all his fault. As such, he takes it upon himself to rectify the situation, sitting up straighter. He says, “you want a glass of milk?” 

Scott looks at him, really really hard, and then turns to Stiles with a frown so deeply etched into his features it almost doesn’t even look like a real human face. Derek thinks of Jigsaw from Saw. 

“Almonds ate an entire cookie,” Stiles says in a small voice, a worried voice, and then Scott processes that information. 

“The pot cookies?” 

“He ate an entire pot cookie.”

“You ate an entire pot cookie,” Scott repeats this at Derek, who just sort of snorts and raises his hand in the air like _I guess!_ “Oh, my God.” 

“I don’t know what to do!” Stiles says. He sort of flails his arms around a bit in the air, and then Scott holds up one hand to stop him, shaking his head.

“Well, you’re stoned,” he explains in a no-nonsense tone of voice, and then he points one finger at Derek, “and God only knows what you are right about now.” 

“I’m great.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Scott says evenly, and then he puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. “Who the fuck eats an entire hash cookie before eight in the morning?” 

“I should’ve warned you, holy shit,” Stiles starts pacing again, and Derek watches him go back and forth, back and forth, like Wimbledon. 

“I don’t see, frankly, the issue,” Derek says around a laugh, and Scott sort of observes him some more like he’s looking at a monkey in a zoo. 

“Look, you can’t eat an entire hash cookie,” Stiles explains. “It – you’re fucking wrecked right now, and you don’t even know it. You should see your god damn eyes.”

Derek touches his face, patting his fingers around the general area of his eyes, feeling bizarrely like his cheeks are water, and in the background Scott goes _oh my God_ , and Stiles laughs, and the entire thing just feels sort of surreal. 

“He’s so stoned, I can’t, I can’t.”

“It’s not even _fucking eight in the morning_.”

“Look, look. It’s cool. It’s all fine. So he’s fucked out of his mind. We are in a safe space,” Stiles makes a boxy motion with his fingers, as if he’s encompassing his bedroom. “Nothing bad can happen to us in here.” 

“Bad things have already happened to me,” Scott mutters. “It’s not even fucking eight!”

“Oh, my God. We can read the fucking clock, you know!” 

“We couldn’t if we were dreaming,” Derek pipes up, and they both turn to look at him. Stiles is grinning, fucking beaming, while Scott just looks despondent, completely resigned to this entire thing. “That’s the crazy thing. You can’t tell time in dreams. I think you also can’t count. It’s crazy.” 

“I don’t think I can deal with this,” Scott says evenly. 

“Listen. We’re all okay here,” Stiles says, and it says exactly like something he’s already said before and Derek can’t handle that, right now. He laughs, palming his forehead. It goes on for what feels like forever – just him laughing, and laughing, his body shaking with it. Somewhere distantly he can hear Stiles and Scott continuing on a conversation, but he can’t process any of it. It’s just him, and laughing, and laughing. 

This is the most high he’s ever been in his life. He has the presence of mind to at least acknowledge that. This is not good. He keeps laughing. 

“…do something about this?” Scott is musing when Derek manages to tune back into reality even a little bit. He looks up through the cracks in his fingers, tears streaming down his face from how hard he had been laughing at _literally nothing_ , and he sees that Stiles and Scott are staring at him. Stiles’ eyes are half closed and he’s smirking, and Scott at least is awake now and looking very critical. “I mean…is he gonna be okay?” 

“Remember when you did this?” Stiles asks him, raising an eyebrow a little bit more lackadaisically than usual. “You were fine, in the end.” 

“Hours upon hours later, sure.” 

“Well, buddy,” Stiles puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. “Looks like you won’t be going to class today.”

“ _What_?” Derek is outraged. “I have to go to class, Stiles. I have to go to _class_.” 

“You literally can’t like this. Do you see yourself?”

“How am I supposed to look at my own _face_ , Stiles?” Derek says this like it’s so ridiculous, and Stiles turns to Scott with big eyes.

“Oh, my God,” he whispers. “He forgot what a mirror is. I _can’t_.” 

“You’re not going to class,” Scott says with finality, and Derek is angry again.

“I can’t just skip class. I’m going, I have to go.” 

“It’s 8:15 right now. You would have to leave in like, twenty minutes. You are not going to be okay enough to drive in twenty minutes.”

“Then you take me!” 

“I can’t drive either!” Stiles insists, gesturing to himself. “You’re not going to class, just –“

“But…”

“Almonds.” Stiles approaches him, takes him by the shoulders. “You’re _Stonehenge_ right now. You ate, like, fucking eight hundred ounces of hash just now. I don’t know the exact measurements, but it was a god damn lot. You’re fucked out of your head. You’re going to sit here, and you’re going to be okay.” 

Derek hems this over in his mind for a second. Stiles might be right about that. He tries to imagine himself actually trying to drive his car, and he can’t even fathom it. How do people do that, he wonders? How do people drive gigantic metal contraptions all over the place? Who built the fucking highways? There’s one road that connects, like, a dozen states. Especially over here back East of the United States. The sheer amount of places Derek could get to, just on one fucking road – it’s crazy. Derek could get on the highway right now and cruise out of New York, through Jersey, and then – what’s on the other side of Jersey? 

“Pennsylvania,” Stiles says matter of factly. Derek turns, startled.

Stiles is sitting there on the bed right next to him, studying a stack of cards he has in his hands, observing the Queen of Hearts and frowning down at it. Scott is nowhere to be seen, the door to Stiles’ room closed, and Derek looks away from Stiles with his mouth open. 

How much time has passed since he started thinking about highways? He completely missed Stiles sitting down next to him, and Scott leaving, and – “did I say all that out loud?”

“Yup,” Stiles says. 

Derek blinks, mouth still open. “This isn’t fun,” he decides. 

“An entire hash cookie? No, it’s not that fun,” he agrees, leaning back against the wall. “Wanna play Go Fish?” 

Derek thinks about pretending like he’s not too stoned to do that, but then he shakes his head. “I can’t see numbers, I think I’m dead.”

“Fair enough,” Stiles covers his mouth to strangle some hysterical laughter, and then he collects himself and breathes out steadily, shaking his head. “Remind me next time to monitor you when we get stoned. Apparently you’re a crazy party animal.”

****

By the time Derek is cognizant enough that he can actually play Go Fish with Stiles, the sun is high in the sky and there are birds chirping. Stiles had brought in some pancakes at some point, and Derek had gorged himself until he physically couldn’t eat anymore, and now they’re sitting out at Stiles’ kitchen table, and Scott is there, and they’re both eyeing him critically. 

“I don’t think I’m high anymore,” he says. “Just fucking tired.”

“Or, at least, not _that_ high anymore,” Scott observes him some more. 

“The thing is,” Stiles sits down across the table from him, looking very serious. He’s definitely not stoned anymore – his eyes are clear and he’s not smiling, just looking vaguely amused, still. “…you’re really only supposed to eat a half at most. Really, they suggest a quarter for a decent high,” _they_ meaning the yoga-man with his camo backpack, and Derek wonders at his ability to make good judgments about hash cookies or really anything else, “but a half is fine. An _entire cookie_ , on the other hand.”

Derek thinks about this for a second. “I guess that’s lesson learned.”

“Yup,” Stiles agrees, laughing just a little bit. “You live and you learn. That was some ride.” 

Derek sits at their table for a little bit longer. Scott gives him a mug of tea, and Stiles bumps his knee up against Derek’s under the table again and again affectionately, and Derek abruptly remembers their conversation. The one that was about to happen right before Stiles noticed that Derek ate the entire cookie, right before Derek really got into the high and completely forgot they had been talking about anything at all. 

That would’ve been an interesting conversation, he thinks, staring at the side of Stiles’ face, his jawline, his neck, while he talks to Scott about something or another. It would’ve been one that could’ve been absolutely beneficial to them, in the coming days – maybe saved them a lot of time, and a lot of trouble. 

But Stiles doesn’t bring it up again, and neither does Derek.


	4. the oracle probably could've predicted this one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is where Stiles' not-so-happy past starts being hinted at more explicitly, and those are the details of the story that I think contain the most potentially triggering material so be aware of that 
> 
> anyway this chapter and the one following it are my two favorites - very dramatic and angsty ofc

Stiles, 4:32 PM : Come to our Halloween Party plz   
Derek, 4:34 PM : when is it???  
Stiles, 4:35 PM : When is the Halloween Party? I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t know.   
Stiles, 4:36 PM : It’s on HALLOWEEN you fucking burnout 

Ever since that time with the pot cookie, Stiles has been calling Derek things like _burnout_ and _permafried_ and _fucking ganja gremlin_. It was funny at first, Derek guesses, as soon as the trauma from the experience wore off, but it’s literally been a week since that debacle and Stiles is still at it with the names. 

Stiles has never, never once within Derek’s earshot, called him by his real and actual name. For all Derek knows, Stiles has forgotten it, which would be unfortunate, considering the amount of time they seem to be spending together lately. 

Derek, 4:37 PM : what time??   
Stiles, 4:38 PM : Spooky O’clock! Read as : 10:30 PM. But no one comes on time lest they look like a fucking nerd   
Stiles, 4:39 PM : the guy I’m seeing can’t come to my party on time. It’d be humiliating. 

Derek pauses, his fingers hovering over his phone screen as he reads that text again and again. _The guy I’m seeing_. Is that what the two of them are doing? Are they _seeing_ each other? Derek thinks so, in the realm of, well, they see each other from time to time, and that’s all well and good – far as Derek is concerned, that’s all they’ve been doing.

Seeing each other, like. Making out, and hooking up, and screwing around, and hanging out in Stiles’ bedroom and all that. They’re not really together they’re just – exclusively fucking around with only one another. It’s not anything more or less than that. It sounds convoluted as Derek goes over the details in his head, but he can’t let himself think too much about it. He just can’t. Stiles and Derek can’t be _seeing one another_ – Derek isn’t…

Derek, 4:46 PM : see you at 11:45 on Halloween then   
Stiles, 4:48 PM : it’s costume mandatory   
Derek, 4:49 PM: no.   
Stiles, 4:49 PM : yes.  
Derek, 4:50 PM : ):

****

“Hey!”

Derek is walking to the library, as he always is at this time of day on Fridays, when he hears the _thump thump thump_ of a skateboard rolling over the cracks in the concrete and the sidewalk lines, and then the familiar lilt of Stiles’ voice yelling at him from across the center of campus. 

Derek turns his head, and there Stiles is. He’s charging through people on his board, just sort of sailing through, a book dangling from one hand, heedless to how fast he’s going or how people are literally diving out of his way. He waves grandly to Derek, nearly falls off his board in the process, and then skids to a stop right next to him with a bit of a bashful smile. 

“Hey,” he repeats, a little out of breath. He slams his foot down on the tail of his board and then catches it by a wheel when it goes flying up, smirking. “You walk pretty slow, you know?” 

“It must seem slow to you,” Derek says. “When you’re going fucking turbo blast on that thing.” 

“Well, what are you doing?” Stiles demands, voice light and smile big on his face. He looks genuinely happy to see Derek, and Derek is also genuinely happy to see Stiles – he’s been holed up in his room for the past two days as far as Derek knows, obsessively working on another one of his twenty page papers on some Greek tragedy Derek only vaguely knows the plot of. So it’s been a little while since they’ve seen one another face to face. 

“I’m about to get some coffee,” Derek says, and Stiles sidles up right next to him and says he’ll tag along. 

“I’ve been stuck drinking the coffee that Scott makes at home,” he says as they walk together, legs almost working in tandem. “And honestly, he’s my best friend, he’s great – but he makes coffee that tastes like shit warmed up. What I wouldn’t give for an espresso machine.” 

“Those things are like two hundred dollars, aren’t they?”

“They are,” Stiles agrees emphatically. Derek pulls open the door and gestures for Stiles to walk ahead of him, which Stiles does with a tip of his head in acknowledgement or thanks. “And on my minimum wage salary, a kid can’t afford it. He just can’t.”

“I didn’t know you worked,” Derek blinks. Stiles has never mentioned it before. Then again, Derek also never thought to ask – his trust fund pays for nearly everything. He occasionally forgets that others aren’t as lucky as he is. 

“Slave to the masses at Lizard Gross,” Stiles huffs, and Derek could burst out laughing then and there. 

Lizard Gross is the appropriate and totally fair, but mean nonetheless, nickname that locals have given to this terrible little grocery store about a block or two away from campus. It’s actually called Live N’ Grocery, which is just as fucking terrible but ten times as stupid as the nickname. It’s run by this horrible little man that will yell at you in Italian if you touch the glass display cases, as Derek has learned the hard way before, and all the pastries come out tasting like feet, and he peddles these terrible wedding cakes that look like they were decorated by a blind man in a cave at the edge of the forest. 

But, that said, it also has the best take and bake pizzas of anywhere Derek knows of. It’s a give and take over at Lizard Gross, Derek will say that much. 

“Do you have a vest and a festive spaghetti sticker on your nametag?” 

“Don’t mock,” Stiles warns, but he smiles all the same. “And yes, I do.” 

“Aw.”

They approach the counter, where Lydia is already standing and waiting for them, and Stiles opens his mouth to order first. Lydia puts up a hand, gives him a look, and just scribbles Stiles’ name across the cup like she usually does. She taps the specifications into the computer and reads the total, so Stiles reaches into his pocket for his wallet. 

Derek grabs his wrist to stop him, waving his hand in the air. “I’ve got it,” he says, to which Stiles tries to argue, but Derek waves him off again.

As he tells Lydia his own drink order, he notices Stiles looking incredibly pleased out of the corner of his eye, a blush high on his cheeks and a small smile on his face. After it’s all paid for, Derek pulls down on the hem of his shirt and announces he has to use the restroom, which Stiles nods his head at. 

He walks off, opens up the door, closes it behind him. It takes him 30 seconds or less to piss, and then he’s washing his hands and glancing at himself in the mirror like everyone always does. His hair is just a bit off near the front, so he adjusts a strand here or there, until he’s satisfied. Then he’s at the hand dryer, which is loud enough that he doesn’t hear when the door opens up behind him. 

What he does hear is when it closes, right as the air shuts off and Derek’s wiping his hands on his shirt to get the residual drops off. He turns, surprised, thinking someone’s just come bursting in on him, but then – there Stiles is. 

He’s got their drinks in his hands and he just sort of plops them down on the edge of the sink, and Derek stares. “Stiles,” he starts, and Stiles nods like _yes_? “You brought our drinks into the _bathroom_?” 

“Yeah.”

“That –“ Derek gestures around aimlessly, too shocked for words. “That seems unsanitary, doesn’t it?” 

Stiles furrows his brow and then smiles, a little incredulously. “What, are there piss and shit follicles in the air?” 

“Yes!” 

“Jesus,” Stiles rolls his eyes, and then makes a big show of taking a long sip of his drink, raising his eyebrows the entire time. “I never took you for a germaphobe.”

“Because I don’t wanna drink shit-coffee I’m a germaphobe, now,” Derek shakes his head and takes his drink, frowning down at it. He’ll drink it anyway, he knows. “That adds up.” 

“Nobody is taking a shit in your coffee, almonds. I’ll stop it from happening. The second a guy comes in here pulling his pants down –“

Derek runs his hand down his face, but he’s laughing. It’s just all so fucking ridiculous. “What are you even doing in here?” Derek asks him when he opens his eyes again. 

Stiles slurps his drink again, and then reaches behind himself to deliberately lock the door with a resounding click. “What do you think?” 

“I literally can’t imagine.”

Stiles gestures around the room, the fucking bathroom for God’s sake, like Derek is just supposed to get it. Derek doesn’t, not at all. He looks at him, and Stiles looks back, and then Stiles throws his hands in the air. “We’re in here to make-out, obviously.” 

“Oh, _what_? What, what, _what_?” 

“Come on, it’s been, like, days,” he comes closer, and Derek just stands there and lets it happen, but doesn’t move to touch him or anything else. 

“Lydia will know we’re in here, and she’ll think we’re doing something a lot worse than kissing,” Derek warns him, and Stiles looks like he doesn’t care about that. He reaches out and takes Derek by the collar of his shirt, pulling him in for a wet kiss. Derek again just lets it happen to him, but keeps his hands off of Stiles’ body altogether. “I really think we shouldn’t.”

“Re _laaxxx_ ,” Stiles says in a low voice, kissing Derek on the neck and then working his mouth back up to Derek’s. 

Derek swallows, his hand inadvertently reaching out to touch Stiles’ chest, right where he knows Achilles’ head to be from prior experiences. “Someone’s going to bang on that door yelling about how they have to shit.”

“I can’t think of anything more romantic, can you?” 

“Stiles…” 

Stiles drapes his arms around Derek’s neck, smiling before tilting his head to the side and kissing him again. This time, Derek doesn’t have much of a choice. He has to kiss him back – it’s his only option. Stiles is like that, sometimes. It’s like there’s never any other available ends except for giving into it, his body, his mouth, his hair, all of it. Derek doesn’t think Stiles always realizes the kind of power he could have over Derek, if he ever really wanted to. 

They kiss for what feels like a long time. Derek can’t remember the last time he ever just made out with someone, with no end goal other than to just keep making out until they get tired of it. Stiles seems to be able to go on for a long time, letting Derek break it off occasionally to bite down on Stiles’ lower lip, or breaking it off himself to peck Derek on the nose and then laugh about it. 

After about a solid five minutes, Stiles pulls away, finally, with a resounding smack of his lips against Derek’s. “My coffee is getting cold,” he says, and Derek huffs and sort of sags against Stiles’ shoulder, feeling a little blueballed. Stiles sips at his coffee, makes a long _aaahhh_ sound, and then jerks his head toward the door. 

“C’mon, before someone thinks we’re doing it in here.” 

Derek takes his own coffee and adjusts his backpack straps, while Stiles unlocks the door and then swings it open, holding it open for Derek and then stepping out into the café. No one notices when they come out, not even Lydia, who’s too busy doing her job to give a shit about who does or doesn’t go into the bathroom at any given time, which is bizarrely relieving for Derek. They walk a couple of steps and then Stiles turns, right in front of the table he commandeers, that good old chap, and tilts his head to the side. “I was gonna do some work, do you wanna stay?”

“And watch you do your work?”

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah, sure.”

Derek shrugs right back at him. “Okay. I have some stuff to do too. Are you really going to let me _share_ your sacred table?” 

Stiles throws his head back in a laugh, and then, so fast Derek almost doesn’t catch it, he reaches out and grabs at Derek’s hand. He interlaces their fingers, swinging it back and forth for a second, right there in front of a dozen or so other people, and Derek just sort of – reacts.

He pulls his hand away as if he’s been burned, lightning fast, and immediately shoves it down into his pocket. Stiles blinks at him, his smile fading as fast as it had come, and furrows his brow. He looks, to put it gently, unspeakably hurt. Derek doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s not about to hold Stiles’ fucking hand in front of the entire world, and he doesn’t get how Stiles wouldn’t be able to understand that, but it doesn’t matter either way. 

Derek clears his throat, and Stiles just stands there, frowning. “You know, I actually better get home,” he says quickly, running his hand through his hair. “Erica wants to – cook some weird thing for dinner and needs my help. So.” 

“Oh,” Stiles says. He sounds disappointed and upset, and Derek just looks down at his feet, feeling like the worst person who’s ever walked the fucking planet, but unsure how to rectify or manage the situation at all. “Okay.” 

“And look, I’ll –“ he reaches out and pats Stiles on the shoulder, the way he would any other guy friend he’s ever had, and Stiles watches it with a sort of detached blink, “…I’ll see you at your party.”

Stiles brightens a bit at that, frown going a little less intense and brow smoothing out. “Yeah,” he agrees, a smile spreading across his face slowly, like he’s deciding just then and there to let the entire situation slide off his back. “Okay, yeah. Make sure you wear that costume,” he thumps his backpack down on the ground and starts fishing around in the front pocket for what Derek knows to be his reading glasses, “otherwise it’s a five dollar fee at the door.”

“Troll toll, huh?’ Derek jokes, and luckily, Stiles grins at him and nods. 

“Gotta pay the troll toll.” 

Stiles waves him off, and Derek goes, step by step, shifting his eyes all over the café to see if anyone is giving him a dirty look, or looking at him like he’s done something wrong. There’s this anxiety inside of him that has his palms sweating, his heart pounding in his chest – but no one is even looking at him. Since no one is, he assumes that no one saw Stiles taking his hand like that, and he’s in the clear. 

Something like guilt flows through his mind for just the briefest second, and then he shakes it off. He forces it to roll off his back like Stiles must have done after Derek pulled his hand away.

****

Erica glares at herself in the visor mirror one last time, running her forefinger underneath her lip in a slow, easy motion, collecting any lipstick that might have strayed from where she wants it to be. Then she smacks her lips once, raises a single eyebrow at Derek, and unbuckles her seatbelt. 

“Ready to go in, now?” Derek asks, and she gives him a look. 

“You can’t walk into a party without checking your face first,” she tells him, as she has a hundred million trillion times before. She’s dressed up like some kind of animal – though which animal she’s meant to be is completely lost on Derek. There are ears and a tail and a nice dress she dug out of the back of her closet that fits her just right, but other than that, Derek hasn’t paid much attention. There was a time when they were growing up where he would have literally done anything to get her to wear a dress like that in his presence, done anything to get her to think about him as anything more than just a friend she’d had since she was a little kid.

But when he sweeps his eyes across her body now, all he can think about is – nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

He thinks about Achilles. Long blue tentacles reaching across skin, almost touching his own. He blinks his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and shakes his head. It’s been like that, lately. 

“Let’s go. We’re already late,” she taps the dashboard, where the blue numbers are glowing out _11:02_ at them in the darkness. 

“Nobody cool shows up on time,” Derek parrots Stiles before he can stop himself. When he realizes what he’s said, he clamps his jaw shut.

“Oh, so we’re cool now?” She raises a single eyebrow. “Remember in high school, when I was just the art slut and you were just the goodlooking guy from everyone’s least favorite nerd class?” 

“Well, Scott and Stiles are cool.”

“Oho,” she smiles at him with all her teeth, red lips thinning as she does so. She’s so fucking beautiful, he thinks, and he’s always wanted her – but not…now. “Scott and Stiles are _the_ cool. Stiles has that whole, like, give-a-fuck thing about him. Like, he’s so fucking _weird_ , but he just could not care less. It’s the coolest vibe.”

Stiles does have vibes about him, Derek agrees in his own head as he unbuckles himself and climbs out of the car to meet Erica on the other side, in the parking lot. There’s a particular pull to him, something in his personality. Maybe it’s the attitude, like Erica had suggested – the way he’s just _him_ and could care less if anyone is annoyed by him. Or maybe it’s in the way he walks, smooth and steady as though he always knows where he’s going, or the way he talks, quick and witty and merciless, or – anything. Anything about him. 

“…and, you know, Scott is a little dumb, but he’s so chill and nice. There’s definitely a thing about the two of them,” Erica’s heels click on the pavement as they walk to the entrance of Stiles’ building. When Derek looks up, he can see the window to Stiles’ bedroom, lit up gently by some string lights he turned to purple sometime last week for the holiday. He keeps his eyes on it until Erica is pulling open the door and he has to look away to get inside. “So, then, I guess it’s cool we’re late to the cool kids’ party. How many people do you think we’ll know at this one?” 

Derek shakes his head. “Scott and Stiles.”

“I met some okay people at the last one,” she presses the up button on the elevator, even though the stairs are _right there_ and Scott and Stiles only live on the third floor. She fluffs her hair and doesn’t need to point down at her feet to tell Derek why she’s chosen the lazy way up. 

They ride the elevator up with some more back and forth chitter about whether there’ll be any cool people there aside from the obvious, and then Erica cites something about needing a lay bad enough to kill for it, and Derek grimaces. By the time they’re knocking on the apartment door, Erica is adjusting her bra one last time and fluffing her hair yet again, and Derek just sort of adjusts his shirt.

He spent an inordinate amount of time picking his clothes. He remembered once that Stiles had kept looking at him when he wore the dark green shirt he has, and so that’s what he has on underneath his jacket. He feels stupid about it, in hindsight, but he’s already standing here. 

Stiles is actually the one to open the door this time, instead of some random person from the party that Derek’s never seen before. He flings it open, and his face splits into a grin the second he sees Derek standing there. Derek had expected some level of awkwardness after the last time they saw each other, but Stiles just smiles and sips at his drink, looking pleased. “You came late!” He shouts, and Derek nods his head. His smile falls, and then he gives Derek a very judgmental glare. “You’re not dressed up.” 

Derek looks Stiles up and down. He’s wearing jeans, no shoes, a white shirt, and a red long sleeved flannel over the top of it. “And neither are you,” he accuses.

Stiles gives him a smug look, and then lifts one half of his overshirt to reveal a nametag stuck to the front of the white one underneath it. _Homer_ , it reads in Stiles’ chicken scratch. “You see,” he begins as he beckons them inside, and Derek knows he’s in for a speech as he and Erica herd themselves in and close the door behind them, “as the Homeric question goes, Homer could’ve been literally anyone. Man, woman, teenager, adult, or just a group of poets writing under an umbrella of a name. That said, I, too, could be Homer. We are all Homer. Homer is us and we are It.”

It smells like bad beer and weed and chocolate inside of their apartment, which is as much as Derek had ever expected. “Clever,” Derek says, and then Scott materializes beside Stiles with a beer in his hand, punching Stiles nice and hard in the arm.

“It stopped being clever in the 9th grade.” He swigs at his beer. He’s wearing much the same garb as Stiles, but he’s got one of those ninety-nine cent masks from CVS dangling by the string from his neck. “Stiles hasn’t worn any other costume since he was fifteen years old. You’d think he’d outgrow it.” 

“You don’t outgrow tradition,” he defends, all pomp and circumstance, and Derek can’t help but smile at him. He’s, really and truly, the lamest fucking person on the face of the planet, but he pulls it off so god damn effortlessly. “Erica, you’re a fox.”

“Literally and figuratively,” she purrs at him – she likely enjoys Stiles so much because it’s a good looking boy she can shamelessly flirt with, but with zero consequences whatsoever. “I’m going to get a drink.” 

“Sure, sure,” Stiles turns and watches her as she walks away, slowly shaking his head. “You know fine art that you don’t get? Like, I’m not much for the classic paintings. But I can respect the look,” he slurps at his drink. “That’s Erica in a nutshell. Or, pretty girls generally for me.” 

“Girls are great,” Scott says, and Stiles nods his agreement with a wink in Derek’s direction. Derek doesn’t know what to make of that at all, so he just sort of accepts it and puts his hands in his pockets. “Actually, in that vein, you should meet my girlfriend.” He turns around and makes big _come here_ gestures in some vague direction of the party, and then, for ten suspended seconds, Stiles and Derek are almost alone. 

There’s an entire party full of people, of course, all dressed up in loud colors and outrageous makeup and glitter, and there’s alcohol and smoke everywhere, and music, and people laughing and dancing and yelling at one another to be heard over the rest of the noise – but Stiles looks at Derek, and Derek looks back, and they’re alone. 

Stiles sips at his drink, looks Derek up and down, and then he smiles. It’s just under ten seconds until Scott is turning back around and the party sounds loud again in Derek’s ears, but it feels like longer. Much, much longer.

“Okay, okay, this is her,” he gestures to a familiar face sidling up against Scott’s side, dressed like a fairy with glitter painted across her cheeks. Before he can get her name out of his mouth, her eyes are widening and a smile is spreading across her face.

“ _Derek_!” She’s half-yelling, and Derek holds his hands out like _here I am_. 

“Holy shit, hey,” he says around a bit of a laugh. When she reaches forward for a hug, Derek moves himself to meet her halfway, and she wraps one arm around his neck and starts talking into his ear.

“Oh, my God, it’s been forever, I nearly forgot you go here!” 

“Yeah, right?” He agrees. When they pull apart, Scott is right there in their faces, smile wide on his face. 

“You two know one another?” 

Allison smiles and looks between the two of them, like she also cannot believe how very, very small the world has suddenly gotten. “Oh, we went to high school together. Middle school, too. I’ve known Derek for _years_ ,” she draws the word out nice and long, laughing as she does so. She’s not wrong. Derek remembers when she had braces and was obsessed with unicorns, and she likely remembers his Twilight Zone phase when he used to recite the opening monologue word for word during lunch period. 

When they had found out they both wanted to get as far the fuck away from their hometown as they could – New York or Connecticut or Jersey or fuck it, anywhere – they applied to just one of the same schools as one another. They both got into said school, and after weighing the pros and cons of all their acceptances, they happened to both choose the same one. It was a crazy coincidence, so for a while during freshman year they hung out. Just to have a friendly face on the other side of the world, it felt like. 

Then, their majors got more and more exclusive, and they wound up in their own friend circles, and, well. It’s been about a year and a half since the last time Derek even saw her from across campus. He, too, had nearly forgotten she went here. 

“You’re from Beacon Hills?” Stiles’ voice cuts in before Allison can say another word, and they all three turn to look at him. He looks a little mystified, an incredulous smile on his face as he looks suspiciously at Allison, as though he suspects there some grand ruse afoot. 

“Yeah,” Derek says. 

Stiles points at himself, right in the chest. “So am I.” 

“No, you’re not,” Derek shakes his head almost immediately. He’d have remembered Stiles, without a doubt. He’d have seen him at some point. No way did they grow up in the same exact town, and never fucking met each other. That place is too small to get away with something like that. 

“Uh, _yeah I am_ ,” he laughs, nodding his head up and down to drive his point home. “You must have gone to the same rich-kid school as Allison while Scott and I went to the public down the street from us.” 

That only half explains it. Of course, if Stiles and Scott went to the public school system, Derek would never have run into them _there_ – but he certainly would’ve seen them around town. Stiles, without a doubt. “How come I never saw you?”

“You probably did,” Stiles shrugs, grinning with all his teeth. “In fact, you definitely have seen me at some point, because you know who my dad is?” He draws the pause out for just a moment, and then tips his head when he says, “Sheriff Stilinski.” 

“Your dad is the _Sheriff_?” 

Stiles nods his head slowly up and down. “The one and only.” 

Then, Derek had to have seen Stiles before. The Sheriff goes to most town functions, and Derek’s family is very community oriented so they all go as well, and – Jesus. He always knew the Sheriff had a son but can’t for the life of him ever remember hearing his name, or seeing him, or meeting him. He flips through his mental rolodex of high school memories and spaghetti dinners at the Fireman’s house, but he comes up empty for any sightings of Stiles. 

It’s like Stiles was always just…in his periphery. Close, almost there, but not quite. The thought is maddening, on some level. 

“What’s your last name?” Stiles asks him, leaning in close. 

“Hale,” Derek says. 

“Hm,” he cocks his head to the side. The name is familiar to him, he can see it in Stiles’ eyes. That just makes Derek so fucking insane – to think of it. To think of Stiles hearing his name at some point, of meeting his mother or his father or his sisters, and never, not once, meeting Derek. “Almonds Hale,” he taps his chin and shrugs. “Has a ring to it.” 

“Almonds,” Allison repeats with a laugh, adjusting her wings behind her back. “What’s that mean?” 

“Well, you see,” Stiles opens up, pointing in between himself and Derek, “it’s a funny story how we met.” 

Stiles relays the story to Allison in perfect flying colors, with the right adjectives and the right hand gestures, telling the tale the way only he ever really could. Allison laughs and laughs like she thinks it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard, straight down to the detail of Derek liking almond flavoring _and_ almond milk in his coffees.

But the entire time, Derek can’t help but think they could have met years ago. Years, and years, and years. And what would’ve happened if Derek had ever seen Stiles in anything more than out of the corner of his eye? What would he have done? Would it have been…the same? As it is now? 

Derek could obsess over it. He nearly does. 

Once Allison hears that Erica is also present at the party, she charges off with Scott in tow, hunting for her in the tiny apartment. Leaving Stiles and Derek standing there by the door, alone once again. 

Stiles sips his drink, the ice clinking around as he does so. “Crazy coincidence,” he says. 

“I don’t think coincidence is the right word,” Derek looks away, past Stiles’ head to where his bedroom is sitting and waiting. “More like _freak happenstance_.” 

“Bizarre occurrence,” Stiles offers.

“Absolutely insanely unbelievable.”

“So, you’re from the BH, and came all the way up here to New York,” Stiles pokes around at his ice for a moment, and when he looks up to meet Derek’s eyes, he looks a little pensive. “Why the hell would you do that? My father’s words, mind you.” 

“Can’t stand that place,” Derek says honestly. There’s no other way to put it. 

“Me, either.” Stiles slurps some more, but offers no further explanation. Derek can only guess why Stiles would despise Beacon Hills so much. He only knows why he himself does, and maybe those are the same reasons that Stiles has. Who could say if Stiles doesn’t? “It’s loud out here,” Stiles finally says after an inappropriately long silence. “You wanna…” he gestures back to the hallway, where his room is waiting, and Derek nods his head almost instantly. 

As if there were ever any say in the matter. 

Once the door is shut and the party sounds dimmed, Derek starts up on the questioning. “So, you went to Beacon High?”

“I sure did,” he nods his head. “Not the best years of my life.” 

“Well, Beacon Prep wasn’t that great either,” Derek says, and Stiles nods his head sagely like he gets it. Likely, he does. Different schools, same shitty fucking town. He can imagine. 

“Did you ever go to Beacon Prep, like, for a game or something?” 

Stiles gives him a steady, blank look. “I’m sure I did.”

“Well, did you –“

“Look, I don’t wanna talk about home, all right?” He snaps, and Derek is completely taken aback. Stiles has never talked that way to him – not even when they hated each other when they first met. He looks so genuinely upset, Derek can only clear his throat and look at him, baffled and wide eyed. Stiles runs a hand across his forehead, breathing out through his nose. After another moment, he clears his own throat and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t – I just –“ he steps forward, pressing his face into Derek’s neck. “Not very warm and fuzzy memories. I left for a lot of reasons.” 

Derek puts his arm around Stiles’ waist, fitting a finger into one of his empty belt loops. “You could tell me.” 

Stiles seems to laugh into Derek’s neck, shaking his head. “I go home for Christmas and Summer, and it’s mostly just for my dad’s own sake. If he moved away, I’d never go back in my life, but he won’t. He – he loves it there.” 

“So how’d he raise a son that hates it so much?” 

There’s a pause, and then Stiles breathes out. “He’s a cookie-cutter type of a guy,” he says in a low voice, almost evasively. “Beacon Hills is a cookie-cutter type of a town.” 

More than anything else, it sure is that. It was suffocating, on some level, and the kids who stayed – they were all fucking alike. Every time Derek goes back it’s like he’s seeing the place with new eyes that can pick up on just how sad and empty it is there, how the people are all clones of one another. Stiles has a point; if it weren’t for Derek’s family, he’d never go back, either, and he bets Erica would say the same. 

Stiles pulls away from Derek’s neck, looks him dead in the eyes. He looks particularly good in this lightning, the purple and oranges shining across his face in such a way that it almost bounces off of his eyes, reflecting back onto Derek’s skin. He nuzzles his nose against Derek’s cheek, and then kisses him hard on the mouth. Derek pushes Stiles closer against his body by the small of his back, and Stiles responds with a sound into Derek’s mouth. 

They kiss for just a minute, and then Stiles is breaking off with a pop, pushing his nose up against Derek’s jawline again. He moves until his lips are right next to Derek’s ear, and then he’s panting his breaths right there, and it’s so sexy and fucking mind-numbing Derek almost can’t think straight.

Stiles’ bites the shell of Derek’s ear and asks, “do you want to fuck me?” 

Derek’s body goes stiff, and then lax only seconds later. He breathes out into Stiles’ hair, pulling his body even closer up against his own. Stiles goes with it, fitting himself up against Derek’s thigh and kissing his neck. 

“Do you want to?” He asks again. “It’s okay to say no, we can just fool around.”

Derek pushes his face into Stiles’ neck and breathes him in for a second. They’ve done nearly everything else together – Stiles has blown Derek, and Derek has blown Stiles, and they’ve given each other handjobs and cuddled and kissed and done all of that. But they’ve never gone all the way. Derek never had the balls to initiate it himself, no matter how often he’d sometimes think of it, almost obsessively whenever he’d really get going on it, and Stiles never brought it up until now. 

And now that it’s out there, on the table, Derek can’t imagine himself saying no. He just can’t. 

Cautiously, he slides his hands down Stiles’ back to where the waistband of his jeans is sitting, and then he pauses, swallowing thick and heavy. 

“It’s okay,” Stiles tell him gently, kissing him on the lips and then meeting his eyes. “We can go slow, if you want. It’s not a rush thing.” 

“No, I –“ he hesitates for a moment, having to look away from Stiles’ eyes. Sometimes looking at him directly makes him feel…like he almost can’t even talk. “I don’t want to be weird about it.”

“Okay,” Stiles agrees.

“Can we just…let’s just do it.”

“It’s a big deal, for you, though,” Stiles insists, shaking his head. “We –“

“No, it is a big deal, it is, but let’s not –“

“Okay, okay.”

“I just want to not…make it into some delicate operation.” 

Stiles blinks at him, as he slowly puts the pieces of what Derek means together, and then he nods his head. “It’s sex,” he says, and Derek nods his head right back at him. It’s sex, it’s just sex. Nothing more, nothing less.

Stiles takes a step back, walking backwards toward his desk, and as he does so he pulls his shirt up and over his head. Derek watches him for a second, and then he breathes in, and out, and takes off his own shirt, tossing it aside onto the ground. 

They both reach for their jeans at the same time, watching one another as they unbutton and unzip, and then slide the fabric down their legs. Derek steps forward at the same time that Stiles is sliding his boxers off and to the floor, and by the time he’s taking his third step, Stiles is hefting himself up on top of his desk with his hands, opening his legs just wide enough for Derek to step inbetween. Once they’re touching, Stiles wraps his arms around Derek’s neck and kisses him, gentle. 

“Okay,” he says breathily, nuzzling against his cheek. “You’ve gotta get me ready.”

“All right,” Derek agrees, voice low. 

“Here, I’ve got…” Stiles reaches down and slides open one of the drawers on his desk, fumbling around for a moment before pulling out a bottle of lube and handing it to him. 

Derek looks down and reads the label for a moment, and then can’t help himself from smiling a little bit. “Bubble gum, huh?” 

“Don’t get cutesy,” he rolls his eyes but smiles back. Behind his door there’s a loud crash, like someone dropping a bowl of popcorn, and then Scott is yelling, and Stiles and Derek both ignore it. It’s like there isn’t any party behind the door. There’s no one else around, not for miles. 

Derek meets Stiles’ eyes as he squeezes some of the slick onto his fingers, as if silently asking if he’s doing it right, and Stiles just runs his fingers up and down Derek’s arm, so he must not be doing it wrong. 

“You’ve – you know,” Stiles actually blushes for once, and when he finishes the sentence, Derek understands why, “…fingered a girl before, right?” 

“Yeah,” Derek says, standing there with lubey fingers, hovering, not moving just yet. 

“Well, it’s not much different.”

“Have _you_ ever fingered a girl?” Derek taunts, and Stiles blushes again. Apparently the exclusive way to make Stiles feel bashful about anything regarding sex is to make it related to sex with a girl. That makes sense, Derek guesses. 

“Well…no.”

“Then how do you know it’s similar?” 

“I’m just _assuming_ ,” he laughs. “I’ve only ever fucked gay guys, all right? I don’t know what you think this is gonna be like. Just – shove your fingers inside my ass, just do it. Oh, my God.” 

“Okay, Jesus.” Derek hesitates for another second. “It’s just a little –“

“Think back to the first time you put your fingers in some girl’s –“ he hesitates, and Derek could nearly burst out laughing, “…vagina. Or whatever. And think back to that feeling and remember that you just went ahead and did it.” 

“Okay, okay, okay.” Derek inhales a deep breath, reminds himself that it’s _Stiles_ and even if he does it completely wrong, Stiles isn’t going to mock him or laugh at him or any of it. Stiles sort of pushes himself to the very edge of the desk, and he’s perched just high up enough that it’s easy for Derek to reach down and fumble around for a moment. “I don’t think this needs to be said,” he starts in a low voice, finally finding the right spot and poking around at it for a second, “but I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.” 

“Just – circle around the rim for a second before you try to –“

“I’m begging you not to narrate.” 

“Well, _God_ , you say you don’t know what to do, and I try to tell you what to do!” There’s a beat of silence, both of them looking at each other with some level of annoyance and disbelief, and then – they both burst out laughing at the same time. Stiles laughs good and hard into Derek’s shoulder, and Derek chuffs out some breathy laughs into Stiles’ hair, and then they both calm down, shaking their heads in tandem. 

“Okay, okay. Okay.” Stiles sits up straight again and then tries to flatten his lips out into a serious expression, to no avail. “Circle it first, get it slick, and then slide in.”

“Okay,” Derek says, using his index finger to do as he’s told. Stiles shifts just a little at the first contact, and Derek looks up to his face, immediately petrified he’s done something to hurt him, even though, really, Derek’s barely even touched him yet. Stiles just blinks serenely back at him, so Derek licks his lips and keeps going.

“You can push one in, now,” Stiles tells him, and Derek doesn’t even let himself hesitate. He just shoves his index finger in, and it goes faster than he thought it would. Probably thanks to the lube, he thinks, just short of hysterical. “Just sort of work it around. You can – crook it.” 

Derek does, and Stiles breathes out a bit harsher than before. After another few moments of that, Stiles is relaxing into it more. Derek can feel it opening up, and Stiles murmurs something about a second finger which Derek obeys, and then Derek quickly realizes that Stiles might have at least been semi-right about the fingering thing. 

It’s not _that_ different from having his fingers inside a girl, he guesses. Well, then again, it is, it’s vastly different, but the general idea of it might be semi-similar. Not that Stiles would fucking know. 

“How do I know when to…”

“I’ll tell you,” Stiles says, and then he reaches down into his drawer again and produces a condom. Derek had almost forgotten about that one. If he’s being honest, the main reason he ever even thinks to wear a condom is to not get a girl pregnant, and the STI stuff usually takes a back burner in his head – mostly just because it’s unpleasant to think about. He’d forgotten that you still have to do that when having sex with men.

Mostly because he’s never even considered having sex with men. 

Stiles tears the foil and swallows, meeting Derek’s eyes briefly. Derek’s got three fingers inside of him, working them gently and easily in and out, and Stiles is hard and leaking against his stomach and Derek is much the same. 

Without another word, Stiles rolls the condom onto Derek a little fumbly – he misses the first time and huffs a laugh through his nose, and then manages to catch it the second time, meticulously pulling it down to the base and making sure it’s snug and tight. Then, he takes the bottle of lube and squirts some in a line right down Derek’s dick.

It’s cold, so Derek sort of jerks with an inhale through his teeth, and Stiles looks up at him with a smile. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and Derek shakes his head to brush it off. Another moment passes, and Stiles grabs Derek by the arm, stopping him quickly. “You can –“ 

“Okay.” 

He pulls his fingers out, and Stiles moves even further off the edge of the desk, opening his legs wide and wrapping his arm around Derek’s neck, almost hugging him, but much more loosely. Derek swallows, takes himself in hand, and starts angling himself up with where he’s gotten Stiles wet and open for him. The angle is such that he’ll have to fuck _up_ into him, which isn’t so bad, considering he’s done it with girls before and – 

He wonders how different it’ll feel. If it will at all. 

He pauses for a moment, just taking in the entire situation, for one more second. He breathes in Stiles’ scent, his cologne, his shampoo, cinnamint toothpaste. Last time he had sex, it was with a girl who smelled like roses and something unidentifiably fruity. He tries not to think about it. 

Wet fingers drag across the Greek on the inside of Stiles’ thigh, marking it up all greasy and shiny in the dim lights, and Derek asks, “what does it mean?” 

Stiles looks up from where he had been pointedly staring at Derek’s fingers on him, and he smiles, just a little bit. He moves forward, just enough to press his lips right up against Derek’s ear, and he whispers. “Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle. But let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.” 

With that, Derek loses whatever last bit of self-control he had been holding onto, and slides inside Stiles in one easy, slow push. Stiles tenses up, and then immediately forces himself to untense, like he’s trained himself to do so, and Derek goes boneless. 

“Jesus Christ,” he hisses, bottoming out on a heavy pant, “oh, fuck.” 

“It’s –“ Stiles scrabbles at his back with blunt fingernails when Derek tries to move, just one quick hip thrust that he can’t help himself from doing, even knowing that he shouldn’t be forcing himself to move until Stiles is used to it, but Stiles doesn’t object. 

This doesn’t feel anything like a girl. Nothing whatsoever, none at all. It’s almost entirely unrelatable, in spite of the fact that it’s both penetrative sex. Derek could easily say he’s never felt anything like this in his entire life, just panting up against Stiles’ shoulder, holding completely still because he’s afraid to move, petrified of what feeling something this good might do to his brain. 

Stiles digs those same blunt fingers into Derek’s back again, and he says, “move, please,” in a breathy moan, and Derek is helpless to say no. 

He pushes out, and then back in, and pants, pausing again. 

“Don’t, don’t stop, keep going,” Stiles begs, and Derek pulls out and in, out and in, in a steady but shaky rhythm. Stiles wraps his legs around Derek’s waist and collapses against his shoulder, hiccupping quick, choppy moans every time Derek pushes back inside. Stiles moans something Derek doesn’t understand right into his ear, squeezing his shoulder so tight it might be rearranging the bones, but Derek can’t feel it over the haze of what it feels like to be _inside_ of him. 

“I’m gonna go too soon,” Derek admits in an ashamed voice, burying his face in Stiles’ neck, and Stiles starts manically petting at his hair.

“Shh, shh, just slow down,” Stiles murmurs. “Just – it’s okay. It’s fine. If you come, it’s okay.” 

“I can’t –“ Derek pushes in again and nearly falls over then and there, but holds on for another, and another, and Stiles is murmuring to him the entire time. 

“Slow, slow. It’s okay. Whatever happens. I feel good?” 

“Stiles, _don’t_ ,” Derek hisses, but its venom is cut in half by how wrecked and ruined and small his voice sounds. “Don’t dirty talk to me, I can’t, I can’t…”

Derek’s body is shuddering, and he manages one last push before he physically has to stop – shaking and moving his hand up and down Stiles’ neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry –“

“Hey, just come,” Stiles says into his ear, “just do it. I’m right here, it’s fine.”

“I’m not _fucking_ sixteen,” Derek huffs, glaring down at where he’s buried inside of Stiles as though he’s angry at his own dick for doing this to him. 

“Move,” Stiles half-commands, and Derek whines and pushes in and out, while Stiles pets his hair some more. “It’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine…” Stiles trails off along a jerky groan, while Derek just – comes. Of course. Less than a minute and a half after sliding inside and he’s already coming, hips going erratic and stuttery. 

He finally slows to a stop after he’s finished his orgasm, and Stiles just holds onto him nice and tight, even as Derek more or less cowers in humiliation against Stiles’ chest. “Oh, my God…” he groans, shaking his head. 

“Just stop,” Stiles sighs, “it’s not embarrassing, it’s not.”

“Yes it is.” 

“The first guy I had sex with came in, like, fifteen seconds. It’s just my ass, I guess, I don’t know.” 

Derek is quiet for a second, the humiliation burning in the back of his throat. And then he processes what Stiles just said, and laughs. Maybe it’s just a mental way of dealing with the mortification, but he laughs and laughs, and Stiles strokes his fingers down his back and laughs too. 

When he finally manages to lift his head and meet Stiles’ eyes, he finds him all flushed and sweaty, just like Derek probably is. He trails his eyes down to where Stiles is still hard, pre-come and all, and strokes one hand over the Greek on his thigh. “Let me make it up to you?” 

“Oh, boy, I get to come too?” Stiles feigns excitement, rolling his eyes. “That was a given.” He grabs Derek’s hand and drags it down to his dick, and Derek works him off in a steady number of strokes. Stiles is all eyes screwed shut and panting and half-quiet moans when he comes, and Derek doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get used to it – just seeing his face, watching him. 

Stiles collapses against the wall when he finishes, and then he’s just as quickly pushing back up and shoving at Derek’s shoulders, back toward his bed. “Come on, cuddles, cuddles, before I get too tired to move.” 

Derek helps Stiles down off the edge of the desk, and then they both sort of shakily and hastily make their way across the room to where his bed is. Stiles thumps himself down into it, right in the perfect spot it would seem, while Derek lays down on more books than he can easily move. Stiles laughs, watching him struggle and curse under his breath, and then sits up and helps Derek pull them all out from among the various sheets and blankets until Derek can freely lie beside him in the bed. 

They face each other, and Stiles smiles at him, running his fingers up and down Derek’s arm again. There’s some quiet, both of them just soaking in the moment, and Derek thinks _I just had sex with Stiles_ , and God only knows what’s going through Stiles’ mind right about now. 

“Did he really come in fifteen seconds?” Derek demands, and Stiles laughs. 

“God, it really was something like that. We were – you know. Stupid kids, and hiding in a closet, literally and not, and we were nervous, and he was – whatever,” he shakes his head, laughing again. “You were so much better. I’m gonna be so mad if you stay embarrassed. It’s not that big of a thing.” 

Derek bites his lip and looks up at the ceiling. There are glow in the dark stars there he never noticed before, but then he’s not surprised. It just seems like Stiles. 

“I really like your room,” Derek tells him, and Stiles _hmm_ ’s. “It’s – cozy, I guess. For lack of a better word.” Right now, it feels like a safe little cocoon, away from the rest of the world, almost silent, like it’s soundproofed and separate from an entire building full of people. 

“Your room is all right,” Stiles tells him.

“Not like this.” 

“I guess my room is pretty great,” Stiles looks around himself with just his eyes, and smiles. 

They go quiet for a second. Derek kisses Stiles’ forehead and Stiles allows it, closing his eyes and sighing in contentment. “The quote on your thigh,” he starts, and Stiles opens his eyes again and smiles. “It’s from the Iliad.”

“It is,” he agrees. “Hector to Achilles.”

“What is it about him? I mean, he’s…” Derek struggles for the words, trying to think of something that wouldn’t upset him. He comes up empty and goes straight for the jugular. “…an arrogant prick, if translations serve him right.” 

“Oh, sure,” Stiles shrugs, which had not been the reaction Derek was expecting at all. He expected at least a little bit of resistance, but there Stiles is, just shrugging it off. “But you know something else about him?”

Derek sits up, just a little bit, to meet Stiles’ eyes head on. 

Stiles smirks at him, that same fucking look he’s been giving Derek since the day they met, and he says, very emphatically, “he was a homo.”

Derek bursts out laughing. He laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs, and Stiles grins at him and just watches, like he could care less. “What?” Derek demands. “Since when?” 

“Since forever,” Stiles shrugs. “He and Patroclus were fucking the entire time.”

“What context – what translation –“

“Okay, okay, it’s highly – it’s highly contested and debated among scholars,” he waves his hand like all these scholars and professionals mean nothing to him. “And, you know. Some people think it was just exclusively a male friendship, but the dude literally _died_ for him, if you look at it from the right perspective. No one’s that good of friends. And then there are other people who are like, okay, well, they were totally homos, but it was super pederastic in nature, which is just terrible and I don’t think that at all.”

“Pederastic,” Derek repeats. “Define that.”

Stiles hems for a second, mincing his words carefully. “Reader’s Digest version? Like – pedophilia, only socially acceptable.”

“Jesus _Christ_.” 

“It’s been suggested that Patroclus would’ve been, like, severely younger than Achilles at some point, or at least when the relationship started –“

“And this is the great dude you have tattooed on your body!” Derek laughs, and Stiles shoves him in the shoulder.

“He would’ve been of age by the time the Iliad started, all right?” Stiles laughs anyway, and shoves Derek in the shoulder again. “And besides, it’s not about that, not really.”

“Then what’s it about?” 

Stiles makes a circle with his finger on Derek’s bare chest, focusing his eyes so intently on the movement it’s like he’s going somewhere else in his own head. “Achilles was this great – god, you know? Like, son of a goddess, half-worshipped and respected by his men, and people quote him and see him as this iconic figure of literature and Greece and history, period, even though he’s fictional.” He drags that same finger down Derek’s chest and clears his throat. “And he was _maybe_ gay. It just – meant a lot to me. Growing up as a closested kid trying to figure out what was wrong with me, you know? Achilles is this incredible warrior, and he was gay, and so – anyone could be if he was.” He clears his throat again, his voice going thin, and Derek can only stare, and blink, and say nothing. “I wanted to be just like him. For a while it was like he was the only one who knew about me and the only one who would ever know. Characters from books can do that, you know? Reach out and be there for you.”

There’s a long pause, because Derek is speechless. And Stiles says nothing for a long time. 

“And anyway, he sucked dick,” Stiles shrugs, face splitting into a grin. “I found _that_ particularly inspirational.” 

“God,” Derek thumps his head back on his pillow and can’t help from laughing. 

Stiles looks Derek in the face, serious and solemn again, and Derek knows he’s in for something – he just doesn’t know what. Then, Stiles smiles as if to break up the tension, or make it seem like he’s not that serious when Derek can tell that he is. He looks away from Derek’s eyes as he starts, “so…” and then pauses for a moment, biting his lip. “You ever gonna take me out on a date, or?” 

Just like that, the safety of Stiles’ room is entirely compromised. He sits up, and Stiles sort of jerks away from him because he has nowhere else to move and Derek is just – shooting up and pooling the sheets up higher on his waist. “A date?” Derek repeats, incredulous. Like he doesn’t know what the word means.

Stiles blinks at him, mystified, and he says, “yeah. You said you wanted to be exclusive,” he reminds him in a slow voice, almost like the calm before the storm. “That means you – you know. Want to date me. In a boyfriend type of capacity.”

“ _Boyfriend_?” He doesn’t know if he means for it to come out as harsh as it does – but he practically spits it out into the sheets like he’s disgusted by it. He doesn’t mean to do that. He doesn’t mean to make Stiles’ face fall, or make him close up in on himself, or – any of it. He doesn’t mean it, but he does it. And he keeps going. “Stiles, we’re not – I’m not gay.”

Stiles looks at him. It’s this look – Derek can’t describe it. He couldn’t if he tried. It’s too awful. He laughs, but it’s not a funny laugh. It’s a bitter, harsh, sarcastic laugh, and he shakes his head. He gets up from the bed, still shaking his head, and shoves the sheets so hard they flap into Derek’s face, winding and disorienting him for a second.

By the time he manages to get the sheets off and away, Stiles has pulled his pants back on, and he’s pointedly working on getting his shirt on. He sniffles, and Derek blinks. 

“Hey…” Derek reaches out and takes Stiles’ hand, locking their fingers together, and Stiles gets this dark look on his face, an expression Derek can’t say he’s ever seen before. Derek nearly backs away from it, if he had anywhere to back away to. 

“So you can do that when we’re alone in my bedroom?” He snaps, pulling his hand away from Derek’s and frowning. “But the second anyone else might see you’re too god damn ashamed.” 

“ _Ashamed_?” Derek shakes his head. “I –“

“What is this?” Stiles demands, gesturing to his bedroom. Suddenly, Derek can hear all the sounds from the party behind his door – the music, the voices, the people. He had gone deaf to it before, like Stiles had somehow muted it, but now it’s blaring again, and Derek is aware that he just fucked Stiles while fifty or sixty people were right outside the door, and it makes his skin crawl. “What _is this_? What are you fucking _doing_?” 

“I’m –“

“You should get dressed,” Stiles mutters, finally pulling his shirt on. He picks up Derek’s pants and all but throws them in Derek’s direction. Derek catches them, blinks down at them, and looks back up. “Just get dressed, and get out.” 

“Stiles…” 

“What do you want from me? I need to know that! What – what is…”

“I just…” Derek clears his throat. “I want you.” 

“Oh, okay,” Stiles nods his head, and Derek figures he’s not fucking kidding, so he starts pulling his pants on, shakily. “Okay, okay. You want me, like – you want to fuck me while the door is closed and locked, and you want to kiss me when no one’s around, and you want to be able to tell no one, absolutely no one, that you even know what my tattoos are. That’s what you want.” 

Derek stands from the bed, buttons his pants. “It’s not like that –“

“Yes it is,” Stiles insists. “It’s exactly like that. It’s literally that. It’s what you’ve been doing this entire time! God I’m so stupid, I am so fucking _stupid_ –“

“I don’t understand what –“

“I’m not going to be your dirty little _fucking_ secret!” 

Derek closes his mouth. It’s really all he can do. 

“You wonder why I left home? You wonder why I hate going back there?” He picks up Derek’s shirt now, throws that at him too, and Derek catches it and puts it on if only to be able to do _something_. He knows he’s wrong. He can’t argue it. But he can’t…do anything else, either. “I spent my entire life, my whole _life_ back there pretending to be _that person_. I can’t be that fucking kid again, I just can’t! I can’t let you force me to do that, I won’t do it,” he shakes his head again and again, chin wobbling, and then he starts crying. Derek just stands there, like an idiot, helpless and stupid and useless. “I can’t do that. I’ve been there. I wished I were dead, you know?” 

“Stiles, please –“

“I won’t do it. Not for you, or anyone else,” he swipes at his eyes, angry, horrified, and then gestures do his door. “I want you to go.” 

Derek doesn’t have a choice. Stiles is asking him to go, and he’s made Stiles cry and be miserable, and he ruined this entire night, and this entire thing, and he’s such a fucking coward. He’s not brave, not like Stiles. Stiles, who gets a tattoo of his biggest fear from childhood, who gets Achilles tattooed on his chest, who always looks people in the eye.

Derek isn’t like that. And he’s ashamed. 

He goes out into the party, leaving Stiles alone in his bedroom, and finds Erica almost immediately. She’s good like that. She vanishes sometimes, but when you really need her, even when she doesn’t even know it, she’s right there. 

“We need to leave,” he says, grabbing her by the arm. She looks at him in surprise, eyebrows raising. 

“Honey, what’s –“

“Erica, now, right now.” 

She asks no more questions. She puts her drink down and follows him out the apartment door, heedless to whether or not anyone notices them or not. They go down the stairs in silence, Erica not even complaining about her heels, and trudge to the car.

Derek gets in, slams his door behind him. Erica sits in the passenger seat and gently closes her own door, crossing one leg over the other and staring straight ahead. 

Abruptly, Derek throws his fist out and punches his steering wheel. It’s hard enough he thinks he hears something crack, but he doesn’t care. After he’s done, he massages his knuckles and shakes his head, jaw firm and tight. He can’t fucking believe himself. 

Erica is quiet. 

“I fucked Stiles,” he admits, and Erica turns to look at him. “In his room, I fucked him, we just had sex. I had sex with him. Him.” 

“Okay,” she says. “That’s why you’re upset.”

“I’m upset because he fucking – he doesn’t –“ he clenches his jaw again. It’s not Stiles’ fault. It’s not his fucking fault. “I don’t know what…I can’t…”

“Let’s just go home,” she suggests in a gentle voice, and Derek doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to do. He looks up at Stiles’ building and can see his string lights still on. He wants to be back inside of that room more than anything else in the world, but Stiles has banished him. And, really, Derek deserves nothing more and nothing less.

****

_What are you doing?_ Stiles asks him, again and again. _What are you fucking doing?_ It plays on repeat inside of his head, that same question – the one thing he allows himself to remember from that terrible night. 

_What are you doing? What do you want from me? What is this? What are you doing?_


	5. Seven-Gated Thebes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's the halfway point!!! This is the chapter where Stiles' past is detailed in vivid colors and it's not all sunshine and puppies so proceed with caution~ 
> 
> I'm adding the internalized homophobia tag per a few requests as well!

Derek tries calling Stiles, once, at three o’clock in the morning, just to see if he’d get an answer. He gets Stiles’ voicemail immediately, suggesting that his phone is either dead or on night mode. Something about hearing his usual drawl relay his name and that he doesn’t listen to his voicemail ever anyway makes Derek clutch his phone a little bit tighter, until the beep sounds and he pulls it away from his ear hastily, hanging up before he damns himself. 

It’s been five days. Derek misses him.

****

He goes into Lizard Gross, a place he once swore he would never set foot in again even on penalty of death, just to see if he can catch a quick glimpse of Stiles. He goes up and down the aisles, gets eyeballed by the terrible guy who owns it, and finds nothing for his troubles. He can imagine Stiles in here, though, using a pricing gun or setting up the displays or at the counter chewing gum and muttering _thanks, come again_ at everyone who comes and goes. 

In spite of not finding Stiles and also in spite of not wanting a single thing from here, he can’t walk out of here without buying something. The owner is glaring at him so hard Derek is sure he thinks he’s a shoplifter or something. 

Derek pilfers a bag of cookies and approaches the register, handing it off to a girl in a vest who looks vaguely familiar to him. Likely from one of Stiles’ parties. She scans it, sighs loudly through her nose, and then grabs the microphone and hollers, “Price check,” before breaking off with a static groan and then tapping one long fingernail on the counter, giving Derek a steady look. 

He swallows. Insanely, absolutely psychotically, like a man possessed, Derek asks, “you know Stiles?” 

She blinks at him, once. “I sure do.”

He scratches at the back of his head. “Do you know what days he works?” 

The finger tapping stops, and she narrows her eyes at him. “We’re not really supposed to give out that information.” 

“Oh, right,” Derek says hastily, nodding up and down. 

She gives him another long and critical look. “You stalking him or something?”

“What?” Derek demands. Another employee has arrived at the desk and picks up the cookies, examining them and scanning them once themselves. The machine makes some sort of error noise and they both sigh, rolling their eyes in annoyance. “I’m not –“

“Well, you come in here asking about what days he works,” she fixes him with an unimpressed glare, “when if you were his friend or boyfriend you could just ask him. Raises some red flags. You didn’t come in here for the cookies,” she picks them up, shakes them around a bit, “you came in for Stiles.”

She’s perceptive, Derek will give her that, but at the same time she’s reading a lot more into it than Derek is entirely comfortable with. He’s gotten himself backed into a corner where she’s likely going to think he’s stalking Stiles no matter what he fucking says, and it’s not like he can explain to her the truth. 

“Forget the cookies,” he snaps, and she raises her eyebrows with a smug smile and watches him as he storms out of the store.

****

A big thunderstorm rolls through in early November, likely the last time of the season that it’ll rain as opposed to snowing. Lightning and thunder crashes and flashes, and Derek mostly just sits at the table in the kitchen next to the window with the scratchy branch, reading and occasionally looking up to watch the rain. He’s made himself some tea, got some store bought pumpkin bread on top of the fridge, and in general is feeling at least a bit content at the moment. Rainy days tend to be where he thrives the most. 

He’s about halfway through his book and three cups of tea deep when he hears a series of loud knocks on his front door. He sips one more time and then glances at the clock – it’s nearly six o’clock at night, the light behind the clouds fading faster and faster. People don’t usually come calling so late, especially when no one’s been invited.

Derek is home alone. Maybe Erica forgot her key again.

The bangs start up again and Derek closes his book, padding across his kitchen and foyer in bare feet. He wishes he had a peep hole for the first time in his life, and then unchains and unlocks the door, pulling it open to reveal – Stiles.

He’s standing in the hallway, dripping a puddle onto the floor. He’s shivering, soaking wet from head to toe to the point where his clothes are _sopping_ , and he’s got his skateboard clutched in between fingers so cold they’re bright red. 

“Jesus Christ,” Derek hisses, and beckons him inside instantly without a second thought. “What are you doing? It’s freezing outside!” 

Stiles sniffles, shivers some more in Derek’s foyer. He drips, drips, drips, and Derek gestures for him to take his shoes off, which he does with shaking hands. He drops his board onto the ground with a _thump_ , and it rolls a bit toward the couch. Derek never noticed his building was lopsided before. “I was walking home,” he says, dropping one shoe after the other onto the floor. They land in a wet pile, and Derek sighs.

“In the freezing, and the rain, you walked home.”

He sniffles again. “Wasn’t raining when I started.” 

“Let’s go,” Derek takes him by a wet shoulder and herds him off toward his bedroom. “Gotta get you dry before you get sick.” 

Derek is thinking about how Stiles’ apartment is not very far from his own. True, Derek’s may have been closer from Stiles’ leaving point, and he might have just been so cold he would’ve been willing to jump into a furnace if only to get warm, but still. He chose to come to Derek’s. It crossed his mind, and he decided on it, knowing that Derek would help him. 

“Get out of those wet clothes,” he says, turning to his dresser and pulling out a pair of sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt. 

“I’d make a joke,” Stiles starts, peeling off his sweatshirt and then his shirt in quick, jerky movements, “but I’m too cold for wit.” 

Derek leaves the clothes on the bed behind Stiles, and then grabs a big fluffy warm towel from the bathroom. When he comes back in, Stiles has got the pants on, barechested, and he reaches for the towel as soon as he sees it. 

Stiles rubs it into his hair, and then perfunctorily wipes at his chest before throwing on the shirt. He snuggles deeply into it, wrapping his arms around his body, and then he’s just standing there in Derek’s bedroom, wet clothes in a pile at his feet, shivering still. 

“I’ve got tea,” Derek says, and Stiles says _please, thank you_. He picks up Stiles’ clothes from the floor and tosses them into the dryer as they make their way into the kitchen, Stiles quiet behind him. He sets Stiles up at the chair right next to him, giving him a mug of tea that Stiles thanks him for, and then just for something to do that isn’t sitting there and staring like an idiot, Derek cuts him off a slice of pumpkin bread and places it right in front of him. 

Derek sits down in his own chair, squints out at the rain, and then looks at his hands. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. He knows what he wants to say, of course he does, but he doesn’t know if Stiles wants to hear it. And considering the situation, if there’s anything that Stiles doesn’t want to hear, then he doesn’t have to hear it. Especially not from Derek.

Stiles sips his tea, and then starts fingering at his pumpkin bread, playing with it more than eating it. He looks at Derek, a frown on his face, and then looks at his bread. “I miss you,” he says, and Derek looks up in surprise. 

“I miss you,” Derek says back almost immediately, scooting his chair forward, closer to Stiles. “I miss you, I miss you a lot.” 

Another long sip of tea, and then Stiles huffs through his nose and lets a small smile cross his face. “I really like you.” He pauses, and then smiles even bigger at himself. “Like, a lot.”

“I really like you, too.” 

“I want to…” he holds his hand out, the one that isn’t holding his tea, “…I want to be with you.” 

Derek swallows. He thinks, long and hard, about what he wants. Stiles had asked him, yelled it at him actually, the last time they spoke to one another, and he didn’t have an answer at that point. He just had one big tangled jumble inside of his head, one that he couldn’t work through even if he concentrated on it as hard as he could. But after spending time away from him, experiencing what it’s like to be denied his presence and his body and his laugh for an extended period of time, Derek thinks that his mind, in spite of all else, has been made up. “I want to be with you.”

Then, Stiles is a little sad. “But you’re scared.” 

Derek sighs and looks away, out the window, where the sky is dark and the parking lot lights have turned on. “I can’t…” and then he can’t finish that sentence, either. 

Stiles takes a long sip of his tea and puts his mug down. He sits up straight in his seat, then he reaches across the table so that his hand is close to Derek’s, but not touching it quite yet. “I knew I liked boys from the time I was really, really young. I just knew. It was more intuition at that point, but by the time puberty came around, I was jerking off to the sports magazines my dad subscribed to,” he clears his throat, sighs, but continues. “But I couldn’t tell my dad. I kissed my first boy at thirteen, and I couldn’t tell my dad. My mom had just died, and I thought – I thought it was a problem. And I thought it would make my dad drink more if I told him I liked boys,” he shrugs his shoulders, a bitter smile on his face, and Derek wants to reach out and grab that hand waiting for him, but he doesn’t. He just listens.

“I told Scott, and that was it. No one else could know, because word would get around to the Sheriff, and then he’d hate me and be angry with me and say my mother was rolling around in her grave, or something awful like that. I had a vivid imagination, a very worst case scenario type of mind.”

“Likely all the tragedies you read,” Derek jokes in a low voice, and Stiles smiles at him with just his eyes. 

“So I – you know. I had secret boyfriends. My first one, when I was sixteen and seventeen, he wasn’t – he was so much more in the closet than I was. He once punched me in the face and called me a faggot in front of everyone after we’d just made out in his car, just so people wouldn’t think he was even my friend. And my dad found out about it and he asked me why anyone would think I was gay, and I didn’t say anything,” he runs his fingers slowly around on the table top, frowning at his pumpkin bread. “My boyfriend hit me, and everyone laughed at me, and I never felt so alone in my whole life. And my second one, he was nicer, at least. He never hit me, but he would act like he didn’t know me if we happened to run into each other in public. It’s just how it was in Beacon Hills, I guess, it’s not like New York or LA over there. We – we were all scared, and I got so tired of it. I tried to…” he trails off briefly, leaning back in his seat and staring at his hands. Slowly, he turns one of them over so it’s palm up, facing him, and then he traces what Derek has never noticed to be a heavily faded scar, likely from stitches. 

“…my dad found me, and I was okay. But he didn’t get it,” he furrows his brow. “He kept asking if it was about my mother. I was seventeen, and mom had been dead for years, but he didn’t know what else to ask, because what else could it be? I got so angry,” he shakes his head, as if even remembering it makes him angry again. “I freaked out in the car. I just – the dam just broke. I had just tried to kill myself and they were going to put me in the psych ward, and I screamed at my dad in the car that I was gay, that Zack had been my boyfriend and he didn’t hit me all the time just because he was a bully, that me and my science partner once had sex in the living room while he was at work, that I wanted to fuck guys all the time, 24/7, and I couldn’t hide from him anymore, and if he was gonna kick me out he should just do it now and leave me on the side of the road.” 

He’s quiet for long enough that Derek has to clear his throat and prompt him. “What’d he say?”

Stiles smiles. A genuine one, this time. “He pulled over, got out, and he hugged me. Told me he loved me no matter what. Wanted to file domestic abuse charges against Zack.” For a moment, it’s quiet, and then Stiles sips his tea and finally grabs at Derek’s hand, locking their fingers together nice and tight. “My point is, I know what it’s like to be afraid to be honest,” he says in a low voice, and Derek has to dare himself to keep Stiles’ eye contact, to be brave, “I know – not exactly – but generally, what you’re going through. It’s hard. It’s not – I maybe shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.” 

“No, you were right.”

“Maybe,” Stiles agrees, smiling just a little. “But I meant at least some of it. I can’t be closested again, I just can’t. That being said, I – I get where you’re coming from,” he clears his throat. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Yeah,” Derek says. 

“Hale,” he repeats Derek’s last name cautiously. “That’s Hale as in – Talia and Tom, right?” Derek nods his head up and down. Stiles meets his eyes steadily, and then he says, “they go to Church with my dad.”

Derek nods his head. They sure do. They sure fucking do. 

Stiles looks at his hands. “Dad loves me,” he says quietly, “he’s mostly a Sunday Christian. Goes to Church, makes a big breakfast after, that kind of a guy. He’s not very into the, uh…fire and brimstone type of stuff. Which is why he – you know. He was never angry or upset with me for who I was.” He purses his lips for a moment. “I don’t know the same about your parents.” 

Derek’s mother is one thing. His sisters are one thing. His father is another entirely. “My dad kicked my sister out of the house for three weeks after finding out she’d had sex before she was married.” 

Stiles blinks at him. “I understand,” he decides. Nothing more needs to be said than that, and Derek doesn’t want to get into it. No, Derek’s never heard him specifically say rot in hell to all gays, but he – he can guess he would say that, if given half the chance. It scares the shit out of Derek to think about now, in a way that it never did when he was growing up. “I – I get it, if you can’t tell them. If you want to…not be public about it, for a while, that’s fine. It’s not easy to just be who you are, especially not when you’re just finding it out.”

He squeezes Derek’s hand nice and hard, and then smiles at him with all his teeth. “I really like you. I’d love to – to help you with it.” 

“Help me with it,” Derek repeats. Stiles nods his head. 

“You know. Help you get comfortable, be there for you, hold your hand, etcetera, etcetera.” 

“That kind of stuff,” Derek raises an eyebrow.

Stiles smirks, and he leans forward. He presses his lips to Derek’s, gentle as a feather, and then pulls back enough to meet his eyes. “That kind of stuff, too,” he says in a low voice. Derek wants to fuck him again, right then and there, but decides to clear his throat and gesture to Stiles’ almost untouched snack. 

“Eat your pumpkin bread. And – thank you for telling me that story,” he says, reaching out to squeeze Stiles’ shoulder. “It was…” Derek doesn’t really know if he has the words for what it was. 

Stiles shrugs, like it’s almost nothing to him now. “It has a happy ending,” he takes a big bite of his bread and chews with a smile on his face. “My dad is the best, and now I’m not suicidal anymore, and I have a boyfriend.” 

He says the last bit almost cautiously, eyeballing Derek from the corner of his eyes as he chews and pulls the bread apart with his fingers. Derek sits up a little bit, clearing his throat. “Yeah, you do.” 

Stiles beams at him, and then chews happily for another few moments. Derek watches him eat, watches as he uses his index finger to collect some of the icing that got stuck to the plate, and then he leans forward.

“Now, can I ask you something?” 

Stiles nods his head, mouth full. 

“The kid you were talking about before,” he doesn’t want to say boyfriend, because it leaves a sour taste in his mouth to relate that word to a person like that, “Zack. Is that Zack as in…?” 

“Oh, you know him,” Stiles licks some more icing off his fingers, as if gunning his hardest for nonchalant. “You should. He went to your school.” 

Beacon Prep was full of guys who Derek wouldn’t be surprised to learn hit their significant others – it’s a fucked up thing to think or say, but it’s just the truth. It was rich, entitled, holier-than-thou, plaid ties and ten thousand dollar cars in the parking lot, and bullies, and sociopaths, really. 

“It wasn’t Zack Peterson.” Derek shakes his head. “You didn’t…” 

Stiles bites into his bread and chews, very deliberately and slowly. 

“That guy is _gay_?” Derek half-shouts this, and Stiles gives him a look. “Well – Jesus. He didn’t seem…the type.”

“He didn’t seem the _type_ because he called everyone a fucking faggot and pushed the out-kids down stairs while his friends all laughed.”

Derek remembers things like that pretty vividly. Zack Peterson was the kid in high school who everyone worshipped because he was really good at soccer and was going to go off to Harvard on a scholarship until he got suspended for drugs and they cut him off. He drove a Lexus and drank water out of crystal bottles and smirked, never did his tie right so it always hung off his neck messily in a way that made girls eyeball him as he walked past. Everyone fucking hated him, but had to pretend to like him if only to make it out of high school alive. 

“And he hit you,” Derek clarifies, and Stiles’ lips go thin. “Just to – make a point?” 

Stiles sighs long and loud, and then he shakes his head. “It was a long time ago,” is what he chooses to say. But Derek knows, he can tell, that when Stiles thinks about it, the few times he even lets himself, it doesn’t feel that long ago. He can imagine that Zack would backhand Stiles right across the face for trying to touch him in public, and then he’d grab him as soon as they were alone and kiss him and go _oh, I had to, you know I had to, I can’t let people think…_

“I don’t even wanna talk about this,” he waves it off with one hand gently, as if pushing all the bad thoughts far away from himself. “I’m not sixteen anymore, and he’s not the king of the fucking world anymore. God, I wonder if he’s – if he’s anything.” He gets this grim look on his face, as he stares out at nothing, and Derek doesn’t know what to say or do. Far as Derek knows, Zack Peterson is just – Zack Peterson. He had been a couple years ahead of them, if his memory serves him correctly, and Derek literally saw him at a grocery store back home over the Summer.

He came back from wherever the hell he’d been, to stay and rot in Beacon Hills. He’s not anything. He’s nothing. 

“I shouldn’t have brought it up again,” Derek decides, and Stiles nods his agreement, eager to change the subject. “Look, I – I’m sorry, for Halloween.”

“You don’t have to –“ 

“No, I do,” Derek insists, leaning forward in his chair to reach out and run his fingers down Stiles’ arm through the fabric of Derek’s shirt. “That was a really good night, and I ruined it. I had – I had a really nice time. That night.” 

Stiles smiles at him with all his teeth, cheeks going a little pink. “Me, too.” 

“It was hard after that to not…see you.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows and then smirks. “Oh, I know,” he agrees, nodding his head and then squinting at him, “I heard you stalked me at my workplace.” 

“Oh, God.” Derek palms his face in embarrassment, hopefully before Stiles can see his face go tomato red. “I wasn’t – I just –“

“I work Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The occasional Saturday, if I’m up to it.” 

“Good to know.” Derek doesn’t take his hands off his face, so it comes out a little muffled. “I wasn’t stalking you, I just…”

“…wanted to see me,” Stiles finishes for him, and Derek nods his head, finally pulling his hands away from his eyes to get a good long look at Stiles. Stiles leans back in his chair, taps his fingers in a rhythm across the tabletop again and again, and then shrugs his shoulders. “Now that you’ve got your peepers on me, what do you wanna do?” 

Derek blinks at him. “You’ve got nowhere else to be?” 

“Well, I’ve only got my board,” he gestures toward the window, “and it’s still coming down pretty hard out there. And it’d be a bit dangerous for you to drive me home in this. Don’t you think?” 

His palms go sweaty, so he has to wipe them down the front of his jeans. “You want to stay over?” 

Stiles looks casual and like he could care less, but Derek can tell there’s something that he wants – and he can tell what it is. “You want me to?” 

“I’d like it,” Derek says. 

There’s another long pause, and then Stiles’ mouth twitches with a smile he’s repressing. “You gonna set the couch up for me, or?” 

Derek laughs. He laughs, and laughs, and looks down at his hands, shaking his head. “You know you’re staying in my bed.” 

“Oh, do I?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay, then,” his chair creaks as he shifts, again leaning back and looking nonchalant as all get out. “What books do you have?” 

“What?” 

“Books. Do you have any books I’d like?” 

Derek blinks at him. “Er – like Greek stuff?” 

“I like more genres than that.” 

“I’ve got…you can look when we go in my room,” he points his thumb over his shoulder, where his door is sitting. “I didn’t think you wanted to come sleep in my bed and…read.”

“Well, we’re gonna fuck,” Stiles says it like it’s a no-brainer, and Derek has to look away before he does something stupid, like suggest they do it right here and right now, “but I have a hard time sleeping if I don’t read something first.” 

“There might be a book or two you’d like,” Derek pushes his chair out from under the table and jerks his head for Stiles to follow, which he does, asking no questions. When they’re both inside, Derek closes the door behind them, and then gestures to his bookshelf. It’s not as prolific as Stiles’ collection, not by a fucking longshot, but there are some good ones stacked up among his textbooks and other miscellaneous trinkets. 

Stiles beelines it for the shelves, pulling the first book in the top shelf right out and reading the back cover critically. Then, he blinks, squints his eyes really hard, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I forgot my glasses,” he mutters, and then frowns. “I can’t read without them. I’m gonna cry.” 

Derek huffs a laugh. “I can read to you, if you want.” 

“God. Like I’m your decrepit old grandpa in the funeral home.” 

“I meant that to be romantic, but sure, take it like that.” 

“Aw,” Stiles mocks, putting the book back in its original place. “You are romantic. You can read to me if you want. You pick the book.”

“All right, I will.”

Stiles takes a step closer to him, a sly smile on his face. “Later.” 

“Later,” Derek repeats, cocking his head to the side. 

“After,” Stiles clarifies further, and Derek nearly has to lift his hand to cover up his smile. Stiles takes it as an invitation either way, and closes the distance between them with gentle steps, before wrapping his arms around Derek’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss. Derek fits his hand around the slim boniness of one of Stiles’ hips, and sighs through his nose in contentment when Stiles pulls away to nuzzle his nose into Derek’s neck. 

“I love the toothpaste you use,” Derek tells him, and it’s so fucking weird, and like something a serial killer would say, but Stiles only looks pleased. “What is that? Cinnamon spearmint?” 

“Yes, essentially,” he kisses Derek again, and then leans in close to whisper in his ear. “I’m not wearing any underwear.”

“I know,” Derek says back. “I didn’t give you any.”

****

“Derek.” Two hard knocks on his bedroom door. “ _Derek_.” 

Derek opens his eyes and immediately sees Erica hovering in his doorway, looking annoyed, holding a mug of coffee. Her hair is pulled up into a messy bun, her frown deep in her face, her eyes half closed from sleep. “What?” Derek mumbles, burrowing deeper into the covers. Beside him, Stiles stirs as well, stretching out and making a small sound from the back of his throat. 

“You’re gonna be late for class.” 

Derek blinks at her. “Class?”

“Your nine am. It’s almost 8:30.” 

There’s a moment where Derek is just annoyed, and Stiles is blinking hazily at the side of his face. Erica stands there for another moment, not phased at all at Stiles’ presence, not even the fact that he’s obviously naked, and then she closes the door softly behind herself as she leaves. Derek listens to her footsteps pad down the hallway back to her own bedroom, where she’s likely to at least try to nap for another hour or so, and then he sighs long and hard through his nose.

He pushes his covers off his body and moves to get up, but a pair of arms wraps around his chest and squeezes, like an octopus gripping onto its prey. “No,” Stiles says, “no class.”

“Yes class,” he replies in his sleepy voice, picking at Stiles’ fingers with his own to try and free himself. “I have a paper due that’s physical copy only. Come on, I gotta go, sleepy.” 

“No class.” Stiles burrows his chin into Derek’s neck, and Derek sighs. 

“I take it you don’t sign up for nine am’s.” 

“I don’t hate myself, so no.” Stiles finally relinquishes his hold on Derek, just enough for him to get up and out of bed, collecting the clothes he wants to wear for the day from his dresser and then closing the door behind him after he heads to the bathroom.

When he gets out from his quick shower, dressed and smelling fresh, Stiles is catnapping again, curled up in the blankets to the point where only his hair and a bit of his forehead is visible against Derek’s white pillow. Derek chuffs a laugh at the sight, and then collects his bag and car keys from the ground. He sits down on the edge of the bed, puts his shoes on, and then he shakes Stiles’ hip when he finds it beneath the sheets.

“Hey,” he says gently, and Stiles pokes his head out far enough that Derek can see his sleepy eyes. “I’m gonna go.” 

“Should I go?” He asks, voice raspy. 

“No, stay,” Derek insists, running his hand up and down Stiles’ leg through the sheets. “You’re welcome to the kitchen and the shower and the coffee. Anything you want. Your clothes are folded on top of the dryer.” 

Stiles pushes the sheets off of his body and sits up, leaning forward to peck Derek on the lips. “I’ll see you on campus around noon.” 

“Sure,” Derek agrees, kissing him one more time. Then, Stiles flops back down into the bed like a fish, curling back up underneath the covers. Derek smiles at him, a surge of affection so strong in his gut it’s almost physically hard for him to get up and leave, but he does, leaving the light off and closing the door soft as he can.

When he comes out into the mainroom, Erica is sitting there, stirring her coffee very, very slowly, and very, very deliberately. She meets his eyes, takes a long, slurping sip, and then smirks at him. She says nothing, not a fucking word, and Derek more or less just rolls his eyes and walks out the door, leaving her alone to be smug and annoying, at least until Stiles comes slithering out of bed to be her next victim.

****

“You know what I just realized?” 

Stiles coughs hard into his fist, and then clears his throat and meets Derek’s gaze, smiling as he hands him the lighter and the snoopy. They switch positions, so that Stiles is seated on the edge of the bed right next to the window, and Derek is standing right next to it, where a small crack is spilling cold night air in from the back of the apartment building. “What?” Stiles asks, raising his eyebrows as he sips at an Arizona tea. 

Derek takes a hit out of Stiles’ idiotic looking pipe (it’s shaped like a penguin), and then steadily blows it out into the snoopy so the smoke dissipates into a cloud that smells like lavender and laundry. “You can speak Greek.”

When they meet eyes again, Stiles looks incredulous. “I can read Greek.”

“You can read, like, five languages if all the copies of the Iliad are anything to go by. But you can _speak_ Greek.” 

Stiles blushes and looks at his hands. “Not – not really.”

Derek sort of looks at him, a smile spreading across his face before he can stop it. He takes a second to poke around in what’s left of the bowl, finding nothing but black tar for his troubles, and then sets it down on the window sill, leaving the crack open to air the room out for the rest of the night. “You’re being bashful.”

“I’m not very good at speaking in other languages,” he says quickly, and shifts his body so Derek has some room to sit right next to him on his bed. 

“Say something in Greek, come on,” Derek prods, and Stiles laughs and shakes his head, his nose scrunching up. Derek smirks at him and pokes him in the shoulder. “Come on, just one thing.” 

“No, I don’t have good pronunciation,” he shakes his head. 

“One thing.”

“No,” Stiles covers his mouth to hide his smile, and then ducks his head and tries to burrow his face into Derek’s neck to hide even further. 

Derek wraps his arms around Stiles’ body and hugs him for just a second, as a cover, and then he fits his hands underneath Stiles’ thighs and uses the leverage to dump him onto his back on the bed. Stiles squawks a laugh, hollering, as Derek climbs on top of him and straddles his hips with his thighs. “I’m going to tickle you until you do.”

“Stop, stop,” Stiles is already panting and laughing even though the actual tickling hasn’t even started. When Derek lifts his hands, fingers wiggling menacingly, Stiles shouts and tries to grab at them with his own hands to hold them down before they can attack. “Don’t make me embarrass myself!”

“Just one thing, please!” 

He rips one hand free of Stiles’ grip and jams his fingers into his side, so Stiles almost screams and attempts to kick his legs out, squirming as his body spasms with laughter. 

“Stop, okay, okay, _okay_ , mercy!” 

Derek pauses, but keeps his hand right up against Stiles’ side, a warning that he’ll start again if Stiles is just trying to weasel his way out of it. Stiles pauses for a moment, panting, a couple of tears forming at the corners of his eyes from laughing so much, and maybe it’s the high talking or maybe it’s the lighting, but Derek thinks he’s never looked as beautiful as he does right now. 

He parts his lips, but doesn’t meet Derek’s eyes. He stares directly up at the ceiling, laser focusing his brown eyes up at nothing, and starts speaking. The words are nonsense to Derek, because Derek doesn’t speak Greek, but as he sits and watches and listens, Stiles’ lips moving and the sounds and the way his voice almost changes – he wants to kiss him. 

Stiles finishes, blushing, and then finally looks up to face Derek head on. 

Derek clears his throat. “What does that mean?” 

Stiles sighs through his nose. “There is nothing alive more agonized than man, of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.”

Derek blinks. “Fuck.”

“I don’t know how to say _hey how are you?_ in Greek,” Stiles laughs, still embarrassed and shy, “I only have – you know. Passages memorized.”

“You memorize things in other languages, just to – what?”

Stiles shrugs. “Knowing one thing, one sentence, in four languages – it changes how you look at it. Like even that, in all its translations, it’s just slightly different. Some translations pack a much bigger punch. In Greek it’s – it’s more beautiful. English ruins it.”

Derek thinks that he agrees. He didn’t understand the words as Stiles was saying them, but just the way they sounded and fell out of his mouth, smooth like silk, Derek can see what Stiles means. 

He leans down, trapping Stiles’ head between his hands, and kisses him.

**

“Can I borrow one of these?” 

Derek runs his fingers along the spines of the Iliad, again and again, until he reaches the end of the bookshelf and the last copy. Stiles watches him, biting into a slice of pizza, and then he nods in excitement. 

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Haven’t you read it?” 

“Not the whole thing,” he admits, pulling a particular book off the shelf and examining it. It’s in Spanish, so he frowns and fits it back in with the rest. 

“You,” Stiles starts, sounding indignant and angry, and Derek can’t help himself from smirking down at the books – he had been hiding this fact from Stiles for some time. “…haven’t read the entire Iliad before?” 

“It’s a million words,” Derek contends, shrugging. 

“Try 358,000.” 

“Why…do you have that fact memorized?” 

Stiles eats his pizza and gives Derek a look like _why wouldn’t I have that fact memorized?_ , and Derek has to concede to the point. “Anyway, yes, you may borrow. In fact I insist upon it. Take the newest one that my dad got me. It’s got golden edged pages and still smells like paper and ink.” 

Derek picks up the one in question, heavy as it is, and flips through some of the pages. It does indeed feel and smell new, the binding cracking a bit as he opens it all the way. There are very few of Stiles’ markings in this copy, save for the occasional underline and starred passage, and Derek frowns. He closes it and puts it back up on the shelf, and then scans his eyes over the rest. “What’s the first one you ever owned?” 

“Huh?”

“Your first copy. The first time you ever read it.” 

“Take the new one,” Stiles insists with a hand wave. “I’m not worried you’ll ruin it, or anything.”

“I’d rather an old one.”

There’s a pause. Stiles puts his slice of pizza down on its plate, and then stands up from his bed and walks to Derek’s side. He reaches out and grabs the last book on the shelf, and pulls it out to reveal it in all its glory.

It looks exactly like the copy that Derek had been given in school to read himself – the cover art basic and simple, a paper back, the edges all browned and the cover cracked in ripped in more than one place. Stiles runs his hand down the front of it and then flips open the cover to the title page, to reveal a _BEACON HILLS HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY_ stamp, and then Stiles’ name scrawled in chicken scratch right over it. 

Derek takes it from his hands when it’s offered, then opens up to the first page of actual text. There’s Stiles’ handwriting again, on the yellowed old page, and the next page, and the next page, all over it, everywhere. Highlighter and black ink and blue ink and red ink, indicating the sheer number of times he went back and read it, and re-read it, and read it all over again. 

“You don’t want this one,” Stiles says in a quiet voice. “It’s – got all my weird teenage boy angst in the margins.”

“This one,” Derek insists, clutching it against his chest. Stiles reaches up and runs his fingers across Derek’s jawline, reverent and gentle.

**

Stiles, 7:45 PM : the roaring seas and many a dark range of mountains lie between us…  
Derek, 7:47 PM : What.   
Stiles, 7:48 PM : I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WERE READING THE ILIAD   
Derek, 7:49 PM : I am, I’m reading it. I’m not memorizing it word for word like you   
Stiles, 7:50 PM : JDOIFJIGORJGIOARJGOEARJGEAPOKRAEPOFAE   
Stiles, 7:51 PM : That’s the Homeric way of saying I miss you, not that you deserve it!   
Derek, 7:53 PM : I miss you. It’s been like five hours but I miss you   
Stiles, 7:55 PM : Don’t go back to Beacon Evil for Thanksgiving ):   
Derek, 7:59 PM : My mom bought me the ticket, what am I supposed to do? I’ve gone home every year for Thanksgiving, I think she’d kill me if I just didn’t show up  
Stiles, 8:10 PM : I’ve met your mother before  
Stiles, 8:12 PM : She likes me.   
Derek, 8:34 PM : Have you met my father before?   
Stiles, 8:37 PM : what, are you insinuating he wouldn’t like me?   
Derek, 8:38 PM : where are you getting that from??  
Stiles, 8:40 PM : From you. You’re the one who said he wouldn’t understand   
Derek, 8:45 PM : Why are you trying to start a fight out of literal fucking nowhere   
Stiles, 8:50 PM : Are you going to tell them?   
Stiles, 8:51 PM : When you go back and go home are you going to tell your family you’re dating me?   
Derek, 8:56 PM : Let’s just not right now  
Stiles, 9:10 PM : oh, okay, sure let’s just not.   
Stiles, 9:11 PM : what are you going to say to them when they ask if you’re seeing anyone?   
Stiles, 9:12 PM : are you going to say my name is Stacy   
Derek, 9:30 PM : I was planning on telling them I’m not seeing anyone.  
Derek, 10:15 PM : don’t be mad   
Derek, 10:16 PM : you said you understood. You said you were going to wait until I was comfortable. You’re not being fair  
Stiles, 10:20 PM : I guess this is so fair to me, then?   
Derek, 10:21 PM : I didn’t say it was, but you agreed to it. Don’t be angry with me, I’m trying. I want to be with you, but I can’t tell my family yet, okay? I’m being honest.   
Stiles, 10:35 PM : okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.

****

Stiles drives Derek to the airport on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break, blasting music and talking a mile a minute about this that and the other thing over the roar of his old engine. His Thanksgiving will be spent in his apartment, with Scott, and they’ll invite over Allison and a couple of other friends of theirs, and make dinner and watch football and get drunk and stoned, most likely. It sounds like fun, and Derek wishes he could stay back and a have a night like that. 

Derek wishes he could stay back and be with Stiles. Stiles smiles at him when he catches Derek looking, and then leans over to turn the music down. 

“You’re wishing you weren’t going,” he says, matter of fact, and Derek can only nod. “Aw. I love that you’re so attached.” 

“You were the one begging me not to go,” Derek reminds him, and Stiles gives him a pursed-lip look to hide his smile, but he doesn’t argue it. 

Stiles parks somewhat illegally and says a prayer that he won’t get a ticket, rushing into the terminal quick with Derek and helping him with his bags. They stand at the confusing computer to get Derek checked in for his flight, pressing the wrong buttons time and time again and laughing about it, until the woman sitting at the desk comes over with a glare and checks Derek in for them. 

He gets his boarding passes. Stiles walks with him toward the line for security, and then they’re right there, and Derek would only have to take another two steps until he’d be whisked off, dumping his things into buckets, vanishing on the other side where Stiles isn’t welcome.

Stiles pauses for a moment, and then Derek pauses too, and they look at one another. Derek thinks that he could grab Stiles and kiss him, like they do in the movies, and like people do every day when saying goodbye to their boyfriends. He could kiss him, and kiss him, and it’d be a proper goodbye, and Stiles would smile when he pulled away and nuzzle his nose against Derek’s like he likes to do, and keep on holding Derek’s hand as he walked away until he had no choice but to let it go. 

They could do all of that. But they won’t. They can’t. 

Derek clears his throat awkwardly and pulls Stiles in for a tame hug, patting him hard on the back a couple of times like he would to any other guy friend he’s had. When they separate, Stiles is smiling only a little, looking markably upset. 

“It’s only five days,” Derek reminds him, and Stiles sort of forces a tighter smile onto his face, pulling down on the bottom of his shirt. 

“You’ll call me when you land,” he says, voice thin, and Derek nods.

“Of course, I will.”

Stiles smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Okay. Have a good trip.” He hesitates for another fraction of a second, as if waiting to see if Derek will do or say anything else, but nothing happens. Stiles turns and walks away, hands in his pockets, back toward the sunlight spilling in from the glass sliding doors out front. Derek watches him go, and watches. The way he walks, the way he runs a hand through his hair, the way his shoulders are bunched up tight like he’s about to go and sit in his car and cry, and Derek has to move forward.

He goes through security, sits waiting in an uncomfortable chair at his gate for his flight to start boarding, and he thinks – I’m going to tell them. 

He thinks about Stiles being all alone on the drive back out of the city and into their suburban college town, thinks about him going back to his bedroom where Derek has left some of his clothes and textbooks and phone chargers, and he thinks that they didn’t even kiss to say goodbye. Because Derek is still too afraid to be honest with the rest of the world about who he is and what’s going on and who he loves. 

And it makes him so angry he almost wants to say fuck it, and turn around, catch a cab to Stiles’ and stay with him. 

On the plane he starts thinking about exactly what he’s going to say when he sees his parents and his sisters. _All you want is for me to be happy isn’t that right, well I’m happy, and I’m in love, and it’s with another man, isn’t that fine? Isn’t that okay_? 

It sounds all right to him. It sounds perfect. 

He’s wired by the time he’s getting off his last connecting flight and setting foot back in California for the first time since summer, jacked up with adrenaline coursing through his body. He decides that he can’t even wait until they get home – he’ll just blurt it out the second they’re within hearing distance of each other at baggage claim. 

He maneuvers his way through the moderately busy crowds – it’s not exactly LAX at BH Airport, but it’s a holiday, so there are more people around than usual – and scans his eyes obsessively for his family. This is going to be fine. And if it goes bad, well. He’s at the fucking airport with all his things. He’ll just go back home to Stiles’ bedroom, and Stiles will hold him and say how proud he is and how great he is, and kiss him and taste like cinnamint and smoke. 

The first thing he sees is the back of his sister’s head. She has a pretty noticeable tattoo on the back of her neck, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail, and then his other sister appears, and then his mother, and his father.

Derek sees them, and they see him and wave, and everything he had been thinking and feeling vanishes. The words die in his throat as they all greet him and hug him and take his bags from him. His mother kisses him on the cheek and Derek thinks that Stiles had done that just this morning, and his mother will have no idea, none whatsoever – because he can’t say it. 

It’s easier in his head, when he imagines it. His father looks at him and shakes his hand and asks him how school is, gruff and cold and distant as he ever was, and Derek can barely even answer that question for how small he feels. 

Small talk starts as they make their way out to the parking garage, and his mother immediately pounces on him once all the car doors are closed and Derek is in the way back, his sisters in the middle, his parents in the front. 

“So,” she starts,” adjusting her rearview mirror to get a better look at him, “seeing anyone new?” 

Derek glances at his phone, off airplane mode, and sees a text notification from Stiles.

 _How was the flight_? 

Derek puts his phone away, clears his throat. “No one,” he says, looking out the window and distancing himself from the conversation for the rest of the ride home, citing something about being tired as an excuse. 

_It was fine_.


	6. the Corinthians didn't build ships just to watch them sink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S AN EARLY CHAPTER..........U BETTER BELIEVE IT 
> 
> it's early because 1.) you lot have been very supportive of my endeavors etc etc I thank you etc etc and 2.) the next chapter after this one....y ' a l l .. . . . . I've been thinking about posting that specific chapter since I started posting this whole thing and I can't WAIT anymore. So take this one today and expect the next on Monday as per usual. I love that chapter LISTEN I can't speak on it I feel like I'm tooting my own horn being like "I wrote it and it's great" and I also don't want y'all to be like omfg it's gonna be amazing and then read it and be like well that was shit wasn't it just bc I got your expectations up but I have been kept up NIGHTS thinking of that chapter and asking myself why???? 
> 
> anyway case and point I love the chapter and I just wanna post it and get REACTIONS already bc my own reaction while writing it was : send the police to me house ASAP I want to be arrested 
> 
> anyway....now that I've harassed you about bein up my own ass LMFAO. As well, you can come experience how annoying I am on the [young twitter](http://twitter.com/swiftbrien) if it would please you. Ask me q's, harangue me about my deleted fics, see pictures of Taylor, read about the ever-present void and how death is inevitable for us all, etc etc

Stiles opens his apartment door, sees Derek standing there with all his bags, and gives him a very critical look. “Hm,” he says, and then nothing else. He leaves the door wide open, but turns on his heel to head back into his kitchen, where he appears to be making a pot of coffee.

Derek had come here directly from the airport, demanded that Erica drop him off, brought his stuff along, figuring he’d stay the night in Stiles’ bed. 

Now that he’s here and watching Stiles keep his back turned, his lips in a tight frown and his shoulders bunched up, he thinks that he might have been just a little bit rash. He sighs through his nose and walks into the apartment, closes the door behind him and dumps his bags onto the carpeted floor of the living room. 

He comes up behind Stiles in the kitchen, and watches as he fills the decanter up with six cups of water, using his free hand to grip the countertop. He says, “you didn’t call.” 

Derek taps his fingers against his elbow, frowns, looks at his feet. “You’re angry.”

“You didn’t call,” Stiles repeats, dumping the water into the machine and still not turning around to look at where Derek is standing. He shoves the decanter so hard into the coffee machine it’s a wonder the glass doesn’t break, and then he jams his thumb on the on switch. He waits for a moment, just watching as the coffee starts brewing, and then he turns.

He leans his back up against the counter, arms crossed over his chest, and he stares. Waiting. For an explanation, Derek would guess. 

“Look, I – there just wasn’t a lot of time for me to get away,” he starts, and Stiles doesn’t even blink at him, “I wanted to call, I did, more than anything, but my…they were always around, and the time difference…”

“So, I guess you really told them that you’re not seeing anyone,” Stiles says, and Derek feels terrible. 

“I did.”

“Well, jeez,” Stiles laughs – not an amused laugh, but a bitter, angry laugh. “Uh – how was dinner I guess? Did you have a nice Thanksgiving? I don’t know what else to say.” 

“Don’t be like this,” Derek pleads, and Stiles just shakes his head and sniffles, glaring down at his feet. “Don’t cry.” 

“I’m not,” he snaps, but he is. He wipes furiously at his cheeks, keeping his eyes downcast. “I mean – you vanish! You fucking vanish for five entire days, one god damn text so I at least knew you didn’t crash and burn and die in some horrible plane crash, and you ignore me, and you don’t call! And why?” He demands, finally looking up to meet Derek’s eyes across the room. “Because you were so ashamed of me, in front of your family, you couldn’t even risk speaking to me.” 

“Stop saying that,” Derek steps forward, “stop saying I’m ashamed of _you_ , I’m not, all right?” 

“You are!” 

“I’m not ashamed! I’m – you said -“ he growls under his breath and tries to get his mind straight. Fighting with Stiles, even just arguing with him, makes him feel slightly out of control. “You said you understood. You said you were going to –“

“I know, all right, I know!” He wipes some more tears off of his face and then sets his jaw tight, looking away and breathing deeply in and out through his nose, as if he’s trying to control himself from absolutely sobbing. “It’s hard. I’m…I missed you so much, and you wouldn’t call me. How do you think it felt?” 

Derek takes a deep breath, and then he lets it out. “Terrible,” he says, taking another step forward, “terrible, baby, I’m sorry.” 

“Did you miss me?” Stiles demands, and Derek can’t help himself. He grabs Stiles by his hips and pulls him against his body, wrapping his arms around his middle and just _squeezing_. 

“So much,” he admits, and it’s the truth. Everywhere he went while he was back in that town, he just kept imagining Stiles being there, Stiles standing next to him, Stiles laughing and kissing him and scrunching his nose up. He drove past Beacon Hills High and thought about Stiles growing up there, reading the Iliad for the first time, becoming who he is now, and he wanted Stiles there beside him to relay old nostalgic stories from those days more than anything in the world. 

Stiles allows the hug, and then returns it, shoving his face into Derek’s neck and crying just a little bit more. “You know, I’m in love with you,” he murmurs, voice broken and small. “And you treat me that way.” 

“I’m sorry,” Derek says, leaning back just enough to kiss Stiles on the crown of his head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m – I’m going to tell them,” he swears, and Stiles shudders and presses himself closer to Derek. “I am. I’ll tell them. Christmas break, I’ll tell them. You have my word.” 

Stiles sniffles one more time, and then he pulls back, his cheeks ruddy and sticky from crying and his eyes red. He looks at Derek and frowns, and then he asks, “are you in love with me?” 

“Yes,” Derek doesn’t even think about it. He doesn’t have to. “I – I almost told them. When I got off the plane, I had this whole speech. Because when we left it was so…it wasn’t like I wanted it to be,” Stiles’ face suggests he agrees, but he says nothing, and just lets Derek speak, “and I wanted them and everyone else to know. But then I…saw them. My father. And I….”

Stiles sighs through his nose. He reaches up and presses his palm to Derek’s face, nodding his head. “It’s scary,” he says in a low voice, like he gets it, he just gets it, and Derek knows that he does. “I’ll help you tell them, if you want.”

Derek sags. “You’re coming home for Christmas?”

“Well…” he clears his throat. “No. My dad is coming here for the first time. But I can – I’ll buy a ticket and –“

“Don’t do that,” Derek shakes his head, taking Stiles by his shoulders. Stiles doesn’t have the money to just be buying plane tickets from New York to California, which is exactly why his dad is coming here and not the other way around, most likely. “You don’t have to. I’m a big boy, I can do it on my own.” 

Stiles looks skeptical and like he might argue the point, but then he just sighs and nods his head, his lips in a frown. “Okay,” he agrees, and then he meets Derek’s eyes. “You’ll really tell them?” 

Derek hugs him again, this time even tighter. “I promise.”

“And you won’t disappear all Christmas break and not even call?”

“No, I won’t.”

Stiles breathes into his shirt, nuzzles his nose into Derek’s neck. “I missed you,” he repeats, and Derek says it right back to him. “I don’t want you to be unhappy. I don’t want you to be hiding things from your family, or from anyone else, I want – it’s not about just making me happy, it’s about you, too. You know that, right?” 

“Of course I do.” 

“Okay,” Stiles sounds relieved, rubbing his hand up and down Derek’s back in a soothing gesture. They stand there like that for a little while longer, and then there’s a creak on the linoleum.

“Um,” Scott’s voice starts, and Stiles huffs in annoyance into Derek’s neck. “…is the coffee ready?” 

“Yes,” Stiles answers, pulling away and wiping at his face some more. Scott is giving Derek this look, like he’s heard all of Stiles’ rants and raves about how Derek wasn’t calling him, and how he fucking hates Derek, and how dare Derek be like this, and Derek can only stand there and bear it. It’s a lot like the look Scott gives ex-boyfriend Kyle. Derek guesses he’s earned himself a spot in the best friend dog house for the foreseeable future. “I noticed you have all your stuff,” Stiles comments as he pulls three mugs down from his cabinet. 

“Yeah, I –“ he glances in Scott’s direction, unnerved by the glare, “…I came straight from the airport.” 

Stiles doesn’t say it out loud, as he works on pouring the coffee and pulling the cream out of the fridge and spooning everyone’s sugar preferences in as well, but Derek can tell by the look that Stiles shoots him. He silently asks Derek to stay over, to come into Stiles’ bed, in spite of everything that’s happened. It seems to be how they operate – just moving forward, even when it feels like everything is falling apart.

****

Stiles walks into Derek’s bedroom, backpack on and skateboard dangling from his fingers along with his car keys, and pauses after closing the door. He looks at where Derek is reclining against his pillows, tapping away on his laptop, and then stares for a while, pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes.

Derek gives in. “What?” He asks, looking up from his screen.

Stiles points. “You’re in my spot.”

“This is _my bed_ ,” Derek says around a laugh.

“I know,” Stiles agrees, dumping his board and bag onto the ground unceremoniously. “And that’s my spot.” 

“Christ,” Derek rolls his eyes and shifts over, away from the spot and the pillows, and Stiles smirks and leaps into the space Derek’s cleared, bouncing the bed up and down. “Do you have some weird territorial thing? Like a dog?” 

“I have my spots,” Stiles shrugs, and then he leans into the pillows, punching them a few times to get them how he likes them. “And I had a terrible day, and I just wanna be in my spot.” 

“What happened?” Derek asks, and Stiles goes quiet for a moment, almost melting into the pillows and the comforter like he could vanish beneath them. He runs his fingers down his jeans and lets out a breath, moving his eyes to the ceiling. 

“Just a bad day,” he mutters, playing with a loose thread on his shirt. “I think dad knows I’m seeing someone. He gets, like, dad radar.” 

“Oh, yeah?” 

“Yeah.” He pauses, drumming his fingers on his chest. “I told him I wasn’t. Seems to be the theme of us. I don’t really like to lie to my dad anymore, but I did.”

Derek doesn’t know what to say for a minute. He feels terrible, like he’s forcing Stiles to lie to his own father when he already had to do that for seventeen years and it nearly killed him. He clears his throat and closes his laptop, dropping it down onto the bed beside him. “You can tell him at Christmas,” he reminds Stiles in a low voice, and Stiles smiles, just a little. 

“That’s true,” he agrees. “But then I don’t get to introduce you. I guess he’ll be back in Beacon Hills from here around the time you’ll still be there. He’s only coming here for a week.” 

They stay quiet for another few moments. Then, “I’m sorry,” Derek says, and Stiles shakes his head, sitting up.

“No, shh. This is just a difficult situation,” he wraps his arms around Derek’s neck and hugs, and then doesn’t let go. “For the both of us. We - we’re just sort of on the edge of a knife right now. Like a balancing act. I always feel like…I don’t know. Like, when we’re alone, everything is perfect, and then the rest of the world comes into play and it’s just…it gets bad. I hate it.” 

Derek knows they can’t keep doing this forever. He knows that he cares deeply for Stiles, incredibly so, but he also knows that it’ll only get them so far. It’s sad, but sometimes it’s not enough to have all the love in the world for another person. If the situation isn’t right, then things fall apart. 

And their situation right now isn’t good.

**

“I’ve got it,” Derek says, shoving Stiles’ hand away from his pocket when he reaches for his wallet in the cafeteria. They don’t normally go and eat the school provided food, since it all winds up tasting like feet anyway, but the pizza is actually half decent, and it’s pizza day, so they decided to be nerdy and eat at school. 

Stiles allows this, but gives Derek a half-pleased half-critical look as he pays for their slices and sodas. Stiles follows where Derek leads until they’re parked at a table next to a window, and then they sit on either side of the table. Stiles dumps his board and his bag, sits down with his pizza, and then says, “why are you always doing stuff like that?” 

“Like what?” Derek asks him, furrowing his brow. He pokes at his slice to test how hot it is, and deems it mouth-burning, so he slurps at his drink instead. 

“Like – paying for my food,” Stiles decides to take the plunge and rips a bite off with his teeth, and then makes a face as his tongue gets burned. “Holding the door open for me. You’ve pulled my chair out for me a couple of times, too.” 

“So what?” Derek blows on his pizza, holding it up in the air a few inches from his face. 

“So. You’re treating me like,” Stiles wish-washes his head around for a moment, pulling at some stringy cheese dripping off the edge of his pizza, “…a girl.” 

Derek laughs. He really, really laughs. Stiles sort of quirks his lip upwards, but mostly he’s only smiling because Derek is laughing really fucking hard, something he rarely ever does outside the realm of Stiles’ bedroom most of the time. “A girl?” 

“Yes, okay? I know it’s gendered and stupid,” he crosses his arms over his chest and blushes, “but it’s weirdly chivalrous and – gendered!” 

“It can’t be gendered,” Derek insists, “you’re a boy.” 

“Not according to the sheer amount of dates I _haven’t paid for_ ,” he raises a finger in the air, and Derek rolls his eyes. 

“I’m used to being with girls. This is how guys classically treat girls, yes, but also it’s just how I – treat the person I’m seeing. It’s what I do, it’s all I’ve ever done. It’s not that I think of you like you’re a girl, if that’s what this is about. I think you’re definitely a man, but…” he trails off, moving his hand in the air to further make his point. 

Stiles hems this over for a moment. When it takes him a long time, his once-bitten pizza still sitting there, Derek sighs and asks, “does it make you uncomfortable?” 

“Does me not having to pay make me uncomfortable?” Stiles raises both eyebrows and then guffaws. “Oh, yeah. I’m shivering and shaking in discomfort at how fat my wallet remains.” 

“Then what are we talking about?” 

Stiles scratches at his eyebrow as a means to prolong his answer, and then he shrugs, moving his fingers into his pizza to rip and tear at it for a moment, getting grease all over his hands. “It’s just – I don’t know. No guy has ever been like you before.” 

Well, that adds up, as far as Derek is concerned. For what he knows, his ex-boyfriends are three. Zack, the abusive prep school boyfriend who likely messed with Stiles on a deeply psychological level that Derek will never be able to get at, and then the second one from high school who wasn’t even worth a name mention, and Kyle. Some real fucking winners Stiles has dated before. 

“I don’t dislike it; I’m just pointing it out. You know. It’s – nice. It’s really nice. I don’t think you know how nice it is.” 

Maybe not. Girls never fawned over Derek opening the door up for them or paying for the movie tickets, because every single guy who respected himself and actually wanted a shot with a fucking woman had done the same to them all before. 

Stiles, apparently, equates having the door held open for him to being treated like the king of England. 

“Who knew I’d be such a good boyfriend,” Derek shrugs, and Stiles smiles at him from across the table before picking up his pizza and taking another bite, finally.

**

Lydia, the girl from the Coffee Fountain that knows Stiles’ drink order by heart, throws a party during dead week and invites Stiles to come along, so Stiles invites Derek, of course. Stiles picks Derek up in his piece of shit Jeep, that rumbles and grumbles so loud Derek can hear it coming a block away and is already leaving the lobby of his building by the time Stiles is pulling up in the parking lot. 

Derek swings the door open with a loud creek, climbs inside, and closes it behind him as it groans. “Jesus,” Derek huffs a laugh, and Stiles shrugs, switching gears and flying out of the parking lot the way kids who drive stick shifts always do. 

“This baby made the trek from California all the way to New York this year,” he pats the dashboard lovingly, and Derek raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Hey, she’s a fighter. She might not be a new fancy model like yours, but she does her job.” 

At a red light, Stiles’ car fizzles for a second, like it’s about to just drop dead right there in the middle of the intersection, but as soon as it turns green Stiles is off again, and the engine roars and putters along down the road. “See what I mean?” 

“That your car approaches death’s door at every single intersection?” 

Stiles sort of purses his lips, maybe a concession to the point, but then he says nothing else on the subject, choosing instead to flip on the radio. Derek leans back in his seat, uncomfortable as it is, and watches the street lights pass by overhead. “Who’s all gonna be there, do you think?”

Stiles makes a hemming noise. “Lydia’s crowd is a bit different than the one at me and Scott’s shindigs.” 

“I still don’t understand the crowd at your parties.”

He laughs. “Who’s your crowd? You’ve literally never introduced me to any of your friends aside from Erica.” There’s a silence, where Derek just sort of looks out the window with his brows furrowed. No, Derek hasn’t introduced Stiles to any of his friends – the architecture kids that he gets beers with and goes to parties where they sit around watching Netflix and playing jenga. Mostly because he doesn’t know how to introduce Stiles to anyone, what he would say, how he would call him. He’s been putting it off. Stiles clears his throat. “I’m starting to think you’re a hermit or something,” he jokes, and Derek sort of forces a laugh and shrugs again. 

“I guess we just haven’t run into any of them,” he offers awkwardly, and Stiles smiles at him all tight, like he knows what the truth is, but he won’t bring it up. “Anyway, this party.”

“Right. Here, um – Lydia is, like, an ex-sorority girl who used to be rich until her parents got busted for embezzlement,” he explains, as if it’s nothing, while Derek just sort of gapes at him. That’s a hell of a story. “Now she works as a barista and lives in this shitty house with a couple other girls. But, you know, she still has her Chanel.” 

“Right,” Derek agrees. “She told me she’s known you for a while.” 

“She’s not from Beacon Hills if that’s what you’re thinking,” he snorts, and at least that’s one person. “She’s from LA, but our moms were best friends. Her mother got the hell out of BH at the earliest possible convenience, but kept in touch with mine.” 

Derek has never once dared to ask Stiles about his mother, if only because he can tell that it’s not the type of thing you just bring up. Stiles doesn’t elaborate on it ever, and Derek will never ask him until Stiles decides he wants to tell him, so he lets the opportunity pass over his head and nods.

“Anyway, you don’t know her very well,” he nudges Derek in the side at a stop sign and then grins, “she’s wild. She’s still got that attitude like she’s better than everyone, even when in reality, she’s just the same as the rest of us now.” 

“So her party is going to be…” Derek motions his hand in the air, and Stiles finishes for him. 

“Weird.” He decides. 

They slow to a crawl outside of a two story Victorian looking house that’s popular for New England, and they’re so close to the border of Connecticut that it makes just enough sense, and stare at it for a second. Stiles sort of has to lean over into Derek’s space to glare out his window, mouth hanging open as he observes it. 

There’s a huge gaggle of people wandering around in the yard, despite the patches of snow here and there, and they’re all smoking or holding a drink of some kind, so at least they know they’re in the right place. 

“Damn,” Stiles says, revving the engine again to find a place to park. “I told you it’d be weird.” 

“I didn’t see anything that weird,” Derek contends, facing forward in his seat once more. Stiles gives him a look, all raised eyebrows and a suspicious twist to his mouth, and finds a spot to shove his Jeep into. 

When they pass through the yard, there are a couple calls of _hey Stiles!!_ , which Stiles waves off in a friendly manner, and then they pound up the wooden porch steps to the front door. Stiles doesn’t knock, and Derek guesses he doesn’t need to. He just sweeps right inside, and the second that they do, a kid who looks vaguely like the quarterback from the football team is puking at their feet. 

Stiles just stands there, while Derek has the presence of mind to back up until he’s out on the porch again, wide-eyed, a slow smile of incredulity spreading across his face. The puking ends, and there are some boo’s from the rest of the party combined with laughter, and then might-be-quarterback just sort of hefts himself up and staggers off to either puke somewhere else or get a drink. 

The pile of vomit sits there, and Stiles blinks down at it, before he turns over his shoulder and meets Derek’s eyes. “I told you,” he repeats, and then steps over the puke and motions for Derek to follow him. 

They move into the foyer, where an old staircase that looks like it creaks a lot is littered with a handful of people sitting on the steps. One of them is holding a giant bowl of popcorn that keeps spilling, kernels tumbling down to the ground in a slow cacophony that Derek can’t help but watch with misplaced fascination, and then Stiles leads him to the kitchen. 

In there, the booze await, which is a blessing, because the longer Derek looks around himself and sees the faces of the soccer team, the football team, the cheerleaders, their student body government for Christ’s sake, the more he gets the idea that this isn’t a party he’d have a good time at whatsoever. 

“These kids are all…” Derek mutters into Stiles’ ear without finishing, and Stiles nods his head as he pulls out a beer and pops the cap off, handing it to Derek. He pulls a handle of vodka off the kitchen counter, heedless to whether it’s someone’s personal bottle or there for anyone’s consumption, and dumps some into a plastic cup, reaching for a coke after the fact. 

“These kids are all the best and brightest that our school has to offer,” he shrugs, and holds up his ¾ vodka, 1/4th coke drink. “They’re all terrible. Just awful.” 

Derek sips his beer and looks around. Even just in the kitchen, there’s a couple making out against the oven, and a couple of girls with their high heels off sitting on the linoleum and laughing, and laughing, and laughing, and a couple of guys rummaging through the fridge and coming up with a roll of brie cheese. 

“Drink faster,” Stiles commands, taking a long sip of his own drink. “They all start to get tolerable once you’re tipsy.” 

Derek obeys, seeing no other option. They meander out into the living room, and there’s straight up a girl doing a line of cocaine off the coffee table, a platinum credit card sitting right beside her fingers as she goes. Derek pauses for a second, shocked out of his mind, and then turns to Stiles, who isn’t even paying attention to her. 

They’re watching The Devil’s Rejects on a giant flat screen that looks wildly out of place for the house they’re in, and those are the only lights in the entire room. The screen flashes across everyone’s faces, making the entire thing seem more like a rave than just a house party, and Derek drinks more.

“Do you recognize anyone?” Derek asks in Stiles’ ear, and he nods his head.

“I recognize everyone. That’s the problem,” he laughs, and they wander over to a section of the couch that isn’t being used and plop down on it. Derek winds up seated right next to a girl wearing a literal homecoming dress, lace and tulle and sparkles, and she eyes him for a moment almost suspiciously. Derek looks away as fast as possible, dreading the possibility of having to interact with a single one of these people. “Great entertainment,” Stiles gestures to the television screen, where there’s blood oozing everywhere out of some guy’s head, and then he rolls his eyes. “Who put this on?” He shouts to the general room.

No one answers him, but there’s some looking around at one another as they all slowly try to figure out who did this to them. When no answer comes, Stiles claps his hands together and starts chanting, “change the channel, change the channel, change the channel…” and everyone quickly joins in with him. 

Derek sits there, like an episode out of the fucking Twilight Zone, and watches as an entire room of people chants _change the channel_ , at no one in particular. They chant, going on like that for at least a solid minute, until it peters off when they realize that no one has the remote. Then the cocaine girl from before stands up, starts aggressively trying to rip the plug for the television out of the wall while everyone cheers her on, and Derek looks around himself, mystified. He turns to Stiles, says, “I don’t think I can do this,” and Stiles nods his head like _yup_ , and stands from the couch, gesturing for Derek to follow him. 

Once they’re out in the hallway, they take note of the fact that at the front door, the pile of vomit is still just sitting there, everyone coming in or going stepping over it without a care in the world. “God,” Derek hisses, shaking his head. “Is there anyone here that isn’t already blasted out of their minds?” 

“These are the kids that start drinking at noon and don’t stop until someone calls the police,” Stiles explains, stepping over the vomit himself and leading Derek out onto the porch. “I never have very much fun at these things.”

Outside in the fresh air, the people seem to be a little less strange. Or at least, less fucked out of their heads. They stand in circles and smoke cigarettes, or lean up against the railing of the porch and smoke cigarettes, or just – smoke cigarettes, generally. 

“How come you wanted to come to this one, then?”

“Oh, Lydia invited me, I wasn’t going to say no.” 

“So, then, you dragged me along with you so you wouldn’t have to deal with this shit on your own.”

Stiles laughs, throwing his head back, and then he nods. “You got me.” They stand for a moment, huddled together at the front of the porch, quietly drinking and enjoying each other’s company in a sea of undesirables.

“You want a cigarette?” Stiles asks, and Derek frowns at him. 

“Since when do you smoke?”

“Sometimes,” he shrugs. 

“Well, don’t.” 

Stiles smiles at him, slow as molasses across his face. “What’s the difference between smoking a cigarette and smoking weed?”

“It’s completely different. One’s addictive and kills you and the other isn’t and doesn’t.” 

Stiles shrugs his shoulders, but he’s still giving Derek this incredulous look – all gentle and pleased, for reasons that Derek can’t fathom. “I can’t believe you care whether I live or die.”

“Stop being stupid,” Derek mutters and takes a big swig of his beer, while Stiles blinks happily at him and slugs at his own drink. “You know, you won’t be twenty-two forever, and things catch up to you.” 

“I absolutely will be twenty-two forever. Well, until February at least. Then I’ll be twenty-three, and I’ll be twenty-three forever until the February after that.” 

Derek eyes him for a moment, while Stiles drinks and watches other people smoke like he’s about to go demand a drag from one of them at any second, and Derek gets what he means. The immortality of youth lives on inside all of their heads while it can be found nowhere in reality, and the years go by. Stiles says things like that all the time, and Derek doesn’t think he always realizes it – but he’s brought entire nights to screeching halts by being so casually introspective all the time. 

“Have I ever told you how smart I think you are?” 

Stiles turns to him with a blink, and then he cocks his head to the side and smirks. “I don’t need you to tell me,” he taps his temple with a finger, “I’m smart enough to read your mind, even.” 

“Ha.” He pauses for a moment, toeing the wood underneath their feet. “I mean it, though. I think you’re – you know. I’ve never met anyone like you.” 

He leans back into the railing on the porch, crossing his arms over his chest as he puts his drink down beside him, and meets Derek’s eyes head on. Behind them, someone breaks an empty tequila bottle over the hood of a car parked on the curb, and the alarm starts blaring, headlights and tail lights flashing again and again, casting light across Stiles’ face in a steady interval. People start scattering out of fear of the police showing up, until someone has the wise idea to realize that was _their_ car, and presses on their keys until it honks one last time and shuts the hell up. 

Throughout the entire thing, Stiles just looks at Derek as if nothing else is going on around them whatsoever, time stopped, and silent. “Well, Stiles’ don’t grow on trees,” he finally says, and Derek can only nod. They certainly do not. 

It’s a gentle moment for them, something Derek figures they’ll look back on sometime in the future even if everything turns shitty and remember and feel warm and sad at the same time. They stand there soaking it in, and then Stiles reaches for Derek’s hand. 

He laces their fingers together and holds on tight, even though he should have known better. Derek pulls away a little aggressively, and when Stiles turns to face him, eyebrows pulled down, Derek just makes a face at him. _Come on_ , he says silently, shaking his head, and Stiles just frowns. Stiles looks out across the party, the yard, the house, and shakes his own head, but he doesn’t say anything. 

Sometimes Derek wishes he could read Stiles’ mind. He can be open and honest and unflinchingly blunt, but then he can shut up tight like a clam within a moment’s notice. The back and forth between the two of them is often times enough to drive Derek insane. 

Stiles sips at his drink until he’s got nothing but ice, and then waves it around in the air. “Gotta go refill the tank,” he says, and Derek feels for some reason like taking his arm and trying to talk to him, trying to grab back at the feeling they just had, but Stiles is already heading back inside, over the puke, closing the door behind him. Derek stands there for a moment, and he thinks about punching something, anything to get his frustration out, but then he just drinks his beer and stands. 

Five or so minutes pass, Derek starting to feel entirely uncomfortable standing around at a party all by himself, especially since he’s wound up as it is to begin with, and then a familiar voice greets him. He turns to find Lydia, in a pretty dress and nice shoes, her hair shiny and perfect, walking toward him with no smile on her face. 

“Oh, hey, Lydia,” he greets, and she nods. “Nice party.” 

She frowns, looking at the yard, and then her house. “Is it?” 

Derek tries to assess how much alcohol she’s had, and can’t for the life of him figure it out. She’s like a blank slate. “Yeah, totally.” 

“Chris threw up on my welcome mat.” 

Derek can’t help himself. He laughs before he has to strangle it at Lydia’s look, and his throat makes an entirely unmanly squeaking sound as he stifles himself down and tries to look serious. “Well, sure.” 

“I hate everyone here,” she goes on, and then takes a long sip of a beer Derek didn’t notice she had in her hand – he never pegged her as the beer type, but there she is, wolfing that shit down like it’s oxygen. 

Derek feels uncomfortable talking to her, like at any moment she’s going to burst into drunken tears and go on and on about how she hates her friends, her life, can’t wait to graduate, can’t wait to get back to LA, and Derek will have to awkwardly pat her on the back and offer some kind of weird condolence, which he’s always been terrible about. Even with his girlfriends, he was awkward about it. 

“Hey, did you just come from inside?” He gestures to the front door, and Lydia finishes off her beer with another long sip, throwing the bottle down the steps where it shatters on the pavement of her walkway. She nods. “Did you see Stiles in there?” 

She eyes him critically. It’s the kind of eyeballing people normally get from their own mothers, and Derek shifts underneath her gaze, thinking about turning around and running. “Oh, he’s in there,” she says, nodding. “He’s talking to Kyle.” 

“Kyle?” 

“Kyle,” she repeats, and then cocks her head to the side and eyes Derek up and down. “His boyfriend.” 

Derek stares at her, and she stares back. At the word _boyfriend_ , his mind sort of fizzles for a moment, trying to comprehend, and his heart sinks into his chest when he remembers the kid from the second time he had been over at Stiles’ apartment. The one who borrowed the books, that Scott started at with genuine hatred. He stands up straighter, jaw ticking. “Ex-boyfriend.”

“Guess I didn’t get the memo,” she says evenly. 

“Guess not,” he says back, just south of rough, and moves toward the front door. She stands and watches him, crossing her arms over her chest, and then he’s inside and looking up the steps. He isn’t there, he thinks, and then he looks into the dining room, where there are kids seated around and playing cards, strip poker it would appear, if the girl pulling her shirt up and over her head is anything to go by, and Stiles isn’t there either. 

He charges forward down the hall, looks into the living room where the television is now just a black screen and everyone is scattered around like a deck of cards someone threw across the floor, and Stiles isn’t there. Derek rounds the corner into the kitchen, and finally, there he is. 

Leaning against the counter, smiling and laughing as he bites down on his straw, talking to Kyle. In better lighting, Kyle is even bigger than Derek thought he’d been. He’s taller than Derek by at least an inch or two, broad shouldered, big armed, and now that he’s really looking at him, Derek thinks he’s on the football team. He has to be. 

Stiles slides his eyes over to where Derek is standing, still chewing on his straw, and then meets his gaze. He holds it for a second, and then Kyle says something else and Stiles’ nose scrunches up and he laughs, turning back to face him. They’re standing too close to each other, Derek thinks, and Kyle has his arms crossed but his hip is nearly touching Stiles’ against the counter, and Stiles keeps leaning forward more and more, and Kyle watches him do it and licks his lips.

Stiles takes another long sip of his drink, lowers his eyes for a moment so his eyelashes rest against his cheeks, and then he looks up and leans forward. For a moment, it almost seems like he’s going to kiss Kyle right on the mouth, but then he angles his face so he’s going to say something into his ear. Kyle leans down just a little, eyebrows raised, and Derek can’t stand to fucking watch a single second more of it. 

He bursts through the kitchen, nearly knocking over a chair in his haste, and approaches the two of them, even while knowing he’s acting – crazy. Absolutely insane. He can feel his pulse skyrocketing, adrenaline coursing through him like he’s honestly considering _fighting_ Kyle for doing next to nothing but talking to Stiles, and he is not fucking drunk enough to have this heightened of a reaction. 

“Stiles,” he spits out, and both of them turn to look at him. Stiles chews on his straw some more, trying to look nonchalant. “Can I talk to you for a second?” 

Stiles blinks at him serenely, and then his lips curve up into a smile. “I’m in the middle of a conversation,” he hedges, raising one eyebrow. He turns back to Kyle, a smirk crossing his face, and Derek can’t think straight. 

He takes Stiles by his arm, not hard, just his fingers wrapping around enough to get his attention, and he leans in close. “I really need to _talk_ to you,” he says in a low voice, and Stiles blinks at him, frowning. He glances at the hand around his arm, and then glances back to Derek’s face. 

Kyle, idiotically, decides to speak up. “Hey, man,” he starts, reaching like he’s going to put his hands on Derek, and that would’ve really been something. Derek would’ve punched him in the face, and started a fight in Lydia’s kitchen, and broken the table, and gone spilling out into the backyard to wrestle with Kyle in the grass, and Stiles would have been angry with him, and who knows what Lydia would’ve done to him. 

For everyone’s sake, Stiles reaches out just when Derek is turning to look Kyle in his fucking idiotic face, and takes Derek by the arm. “All right,” Stiles says quickly, pushing Derek a bit away from Kyle and into the middle of the kitchen. “I’ll just –“

“Stiles,” Kyle starts, looking at Derek like he strongly suspects that Derek is going to punch Stiles in the face the literal second the two of them are alone, but Stiles just waves him off. 

“I’ll talk to you later,” he says, and Kyle watches them go with a twist to his mouth. 

Derek herds Stiles out of the kitchen and into the adjoining laundry room, where a washer and dryer sits, and then through there to where a large pantry is wide open and dark. Stiles makes a noise of protest, sort of flailing his arms as Derek guides him, but Derek just pushes him forward into the pantry, slamming the doors behind them, and flicking on the light.

“What is your fucking problem?” Stiles demands, squinting against the brightness of the light. 

“What were you doing talking to him?”

Stiles stares at him for a second. “Are you going to tell me who I can and can’t _fucking_ talk to?” 

“It’s not –“ Derek growls, looking off to the side for a second where there’s a box of cake mix with the Pillsbury dough boy smirking out at him. “You weren’t just talking to him and you know you weren’t, you _know_ you weren’t.” 

Stiles opens his mouth to retaliate, but Derek keeps talking. 

“You were flirting with him to fucking make me jealous,” he accuses, and Stiles doesn’t have anything to say to that. He closes his mouth, crosses his arms over his chest, and looks away. His jaw is tight, and Derek just wants to grab him by his chin and force him to look Derek in the eyes. “You _were_! You actually were! Oh, my God…”

“Maybe I was,” he admits in a low voice, and Derek shakes his head.

“Are you _crazy_?” He remembers when he thought Stiles was, back with the table and the parking spot. How Stiles was such an overreacter, went too far, got himself nearly expelled from school just to make a fucking point about a parking spot – and now here they are, standing in a pantry, half-shouting at one another, because Stiles has done it again. 

“No, I’m not, I’m not crazy!” He shouts back. “You won’t touch me!” 

“That’s –“

“You won’t touch me if there’s anyone, anyone at all to see us, even if it’s people you couldn’t care less about, you’ve never met, you won’t ever speak to again! Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?” 

Derek doesn’t want to think about how it makes Stiles feel, because then he’ll have to admit that this whole thing might be falling apart in their hands, and Derek is just letting it happen, and he’s scared. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want this conversation, this fight, this party, none of it – he wants to be back in Stiles’ bedroom, where they never fight like this. 

“So maybe I did flirt with Kyle,” he shrugs his shoulders and looks away again, very pointedly. “Kyle never had a problem kissing me in front of people –“

“Don’t,” Derek hisses, “just stop it.” 

“Well, he didn’t!”

“What did you think was going to happen if I came in there and saw you two?” Derek snaps, and Stiles swallows. “Did you think I’d just – what? Stand there and let it happen? I could fucking hit that guy right now –“

“Stop,” Stiles says, even as Derek is turning around like he’s honestly going to burst out of the pantry, hunt Kyle down, and fight him. “You’re acting insane!” 

“Oh, I am?” Derek points to himself, eyebrows raised. “You’re the one fucking egging this entire thing on, aren’t you?” 

“I didn’t think you’d –“

“You obviously don’t know how you make me feel!” 

There’s quiet, in the wake of that. They stand there staring at each other, right in the eyes, and Derek’s breath is a little shallow, his adrenaline still high, and Stiles has his lips pursed as he traces Derek’s face, trying to understand any of this. This entire thing is a mess, Derek thinks, looking away, down at his feet. It keeps getting out of his hands, because he…

“And how do I make you feel?” Stiles asks, voice low. 

Derek stares at the ground some more, trying to even come up with the words. He can smell Stiles’ cologne and his skin and his hair and his clothes, and he’s right there, _right there_ , close enough to touch, so Derek does.

He puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder, thumb edging against his collarbone, and just breathes. “Crazy,” he admits. “Out of control.” 

If Stiles had made him feel anything else, anything less intense, then Derek never would’ve taken up with him to begin with. He could’ve avoided the feeling altogether, pretended he didn’t have feelings for another boy, and that would’ve been that. But Stiles – he’s something else. He’s always made Derek feel like he was hanging on by a thread, and Stiles would constantly come with scissors and snip away at it until Derek had no choice but to give into it. 

There’s something so intense about what they have. And Derek has been holding it all back, like a caged animal, out of fear. They can only do it for so long. 

Stiles puts his hand on top of Derek’s on his shoulder and sighs through his nose, eyes bright. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he admits, and Derek nods his head. No, he shouldn’t have. 

“I shouldn’t have – I shouldn’t have yelled at you, like that.” 

Stiles nods his head right back. No, he shouldn’t have. 

“You just…” Derek steps forward, into Stiles’ space, and presses their foreheads together. Stiles’ breath fans across his face, like liquor and cinnamon, and Derek wants to taste him, so he does. They kiss, quick and hard and rough, and then Derek has to pull back and rest his head on Stiles’ shoulder. “You just make me feel so fucking out of it.” 

“I know,” Stiles agrees. 

“I just want to be with you all the time, all the time, but I’m…”

“Yeah.” 

“I wanna touch you,” Derek grumbles, and Stiles breathes out, shallow and heavy at the same time. He lifts his head and kisses Stiles again, this time backing him up against the shelves, so a handful of things get knocked over, spilling onto the ground or creating a domino effect behind them, but neither of them care. Derek buries his face into Stiles’ neck and bites him, just a bit, enough to elicit a gasp and a jerk of his hips against Derek’s leg, and Derek laves his tongue over the mark, soothing it over. 

He presses possessive kisses all along Stiles’ neck and jawline, until Stiles is angling his face in such a way that Derek has no choice but to kiss him on the mouth. Stiles grabs him by his shirt and pulls him in tight up against him, so his erection is pressed right up against Derek’s leg, and Stiles has done that on purpose, of course he has. 

Derek chuffs a laugh and presses his lips to Stiles’ ear. “Do you want me to –“

“Yes,” Stiles cuts him off before he can finish, swallowing hard and running his fingers a little manically up and down Derek’s back. “Anything, I just want – I want –“

“Shh, okay,” Derek agrees, and then he pushes Stiles back a little into the shelves, just enough that a bottle of olive oil goes down with a _thump_ , and Stiles ignores it. Derek reaches down and palms at Stiles through his jeans, and Stiles tosses his head back so it smacks on the highest shelf, biting his lip and shuddering. 

He rubs him through the fabric for just a while, watching Stiles’ fingers clench and unclench, his hand reach out and grab Derek’s shoulder as he whimpers and tries to make Derek go faster, but Derek keeps his pace steady and even, slowly drawing every noise out of Stiles’ mouth. Stiles does manage to keep relatively quiet, likely from having had a roommate for so long. There are people just ten feet away, having no idea what’s going on in here right now, and something about that makes the entire thing more absurd, crazier, fucking out of control – just like Stiles and Derek’s entire fucking relationship up to this point. 

“I’m gonna make you come in your pants,” Derek hisses under his breath, and Stiles screws his eyes shut and then hides his face in Derek’s neck, panting. “I am.” 

“Derek,” Stiles says, breathless and quiet, and it’s the first time, the very first time, he’s ever heard Stiles say his name out loud before. It makes him stumble for a second, nearly losing his hand on Stiles, but then he rights himself and pushes harder, fitting his hand underneath the jeans and into Stiles’ underwear, using the precome to tug and pull nice and rough until Stiles is tensing up, making gentle noises right in Derek’s ear. “I’m coming,” he strangles out, and Derek works him through it until Stiles does indeed come in his underwear, going boneless around a mewl, and then sagging against Derek’s chest, holding on for dear life. 

They’re quiet for a moment, Stiles hugging him and kissing him on the cheek, and then Stiles shifts and sighs in contentment. He angles his face to peck Derek on the lips, and rests his cheek on Derek’s shoulder, running his hand up and down Derek’s back. 

“I love you,” he says. And then, “I’m sorry.” 

Derek swallows, closing his eyes and wishing they could be anywhere, anywhere else on the planet. Wishing they were in Beacon Hills and Derek was brave and he walked right up to his father and pointed to Stiles and said _that’s him_ , and it would be over. And he wouldn’t be afraid of anything anymore. 

“I’m sorry, too,” he says, and then they say nothing else after that.

****

“You don’t have to get me anything,” Stiles insists, taking the lid off of his coffee, where the whipped cream is stuck to the bottom. He uses the crook of his finger to scoop it out and then sticks said finger into his mouth. “I know you’re not really, like, the holiday guy.” 

“First of all, just because I don’t cream myself over every holiday, that doesn’t mean I hate them or something,” he rolls his eyes, and Stiles smirks at him from across his table at the fountain. “And second of all, of course I have to get you something, and not just because it’s mandatory. I know you already got me something.” 

Stiles looks affronted, aghast, pulling his neck back and sputtering for a second. “What? I – what?” 

Derek just rolls his eyes again.

“Says who? Who says I got you anything?” 

“The box in the closet wrapped with snowman paper that has ‘almonds’ on the name tag.” 

Stiles snaps his fingers and growls. “I had been so careful,” he mutters, shaking his head at himself. 

“You put it right next to the spot where I always leave my backpack when I come over.” 

Stiles’ cheeks color, and then he takes an angry jab at some more whipped cream, frown deep on his face. “It’s not my fault you’re a snoop. I can’t believe you ruined your surprise.” 

“Anyway,” Derek waves his hand like this is all aside from the point, “I already got you something, too.” 

Stiles smiles at him now, lapping some more whipped cream out of his lid and looking very pleased. “Oh,” he says, trying to hide his delight. “Well, okay.”

“I mean,” Derek taps his finger on his chin, “I could return it, since you’re so hellbent on me being a Grinch –“

“There’s no need for that,” Stiles insists quickly. “You already went to all the trouble to get it, so.” He runs his hands down the front of his jeans, glances out the window, fixes his scarf, and then apparently having given up on trying to be nonchalant, leans across the table and demands, “so what is it?” 

“It wouldn’t be a gift if I told you what it was.” 

“It’s a gift so long as you pay for it and give it to me,” Stiles says, and Derek sighs, “is it a book?” 

“I’m not telling you.” 

“Is it a gift card?”

“Jesus Christ,” Derek gives him a look. “Like I’d ever give you a _gift card_.” 

“Tell me!”

“No.”

**

“Is it a new pair of shoes?” Stiles asks, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. Derek leans over the sink, spits, runs water over his brush, and shakes his head. 

“It might be,” he decides, and Stiles looks disappointed, staring at himself in the mirror. 

“That’s a dad gift.” 

“Okay, then,” Derek washes his mouth out with water, spits it out, and says, “it’s a dildo.” 

Stiles guffaws, snorting and huffing his laughter, and then he meets Derek’s eyes in the mirror. Derek stares back at him, blank faced and serious, eyebrows risen. Stiles looks at him some more, and then turns to face him directly, mouth hanging open, some toothpaste foam gathered in the corner of his mouth that Derek reaches out and scrubs away with his thumb. “You’re joking,” he says carefully. 

Derek shrugs. “Am I?”

**

“It’s a new car!”

Derek looks up from his laptop, finishing off the last of his finals, to find Stiles standing in his bedroom doorway, panting. “You wish it was,” Derek tells him, and Stiles deflates. “Since yours can barely make it through this snow without coughing and sputtering.” 

“She was born in Venice Beach,” Stiles defends. “She can’t handle the cold. She’s fragile, you know that.” 

“It’s not a car,” Derek says, and Stiles flops down on the bed next to him – in his spot, of course.

“You have money,” Stiles says, pressing his cold nose into Derek’s neck, heedless to the fact that Derek is trying to get work done. “And you won’t buy me a car. I fucking can’t stand this loveless marriage.” 

“It’s not a car,” is all Derek says, and Stiles kisses his neck and leaves him to do his work, napping right next to him.

**

“Is it a kitten?” 

“Where am I keeping the kitten?” 

“I don’t know,” Stiles shrugs, grinning from ear to ear. “But you know I want a kitten.” 

“Yes,” Derek agrees, pinching the bridge of his nose across from Stiles at the Cheesecake Factory. “I also know you want a turtle, and a bunny, and a mouse, and a ferret, and a Siberian tiger, and a giraffe –“

“You really did it,” Stiles shakes his head incredulously as he slices into his oreo cheesecake – their celebratory end-of-finals gift to themselves. “You really bought me the Bronx Zoo.” 

“Spiders and snakes and all,” he taunts, and Stiles goes pale at the words themselves.

**

“Is it a new oven mitt?” Stiles asks, holding his hand up to reveal a giant burned-out hole in the mitt he’s got on, now. He frowns at it, and then huffs a sigh and leans down to grab at his cookies in the oven, strategically positioning the mitt in such a way that he manages only barely to not burn himself as he dumps them on top of the stove to let them cool. He observes his cookies carefully, frowns some more. “Is it a baking class?” 

“You know what,” Derek slaps his book closed, scraping his chair out on the linoleum. “Let’s just do it now.” 

Stiles is alarmed and excited. 

“I was going to wait and have it be special and nice, but since it’s physically impossible to keep a secret from you, I guess we’ll just – _do it now_.” 

“Wow!” Stiles beams, and then he holds his hands out, grabbing at a spatula and hurriedly scraping his cookies off the pan and dumping them onto a plate without a care in the world. “Okay!” 

“Okay,” Derek agrees, rolling his eyes. He moves to take something out of his jacket, and Stiles _screams_ at him, holding one hand out as the other works quickly on the cookies still. 

“We have to get everything ready,” he hisses, and Derek looks somewhere at an imaginary camera. “We need the cookies, and some milk, and we’re going to have our own mini Christmas. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Derek agrees, since he’s helpless to these proceedings either way. 

It’s the day before the day that Derek is getting on a plane and going back home. Finals are over, and there’s a mini Charlie Brown tree hovering in the corner of Stiles and Scott’s living room with a handful of gifts to and from each other already sitting underneath it. There’s a couple for Stiles’ dad down there, as well, for when he comes up the week before Christmas, and then goes back home on Christmas day to avoid the traffic. 

Derek is leaving on December the 17th and coming back on Janurary 9th, and neither he nor Stiles have really talked about. Derek doesn’t want to bring it up, even though he’s already started packing and Stiles has noticed, and Stiles seems to be reluctant to himself. They sort of dance around the subject, neither one of them ever breaching it. 

Stiles pours two glasses of milk haphazardly, spilling some across his counter top, and then he’s clutching both of them against his chest as he carries the plate of cookies, and then he gestures with his head to indicate that Derek is meant to follow him. 

He had changed his string lights to red and green sometime after Thanksgiving, so the entire room is Christmassy in and of itself, including the tiny Rudolph plush he has sitting on his desk, leering at everyone who sets foot in here. Stiles puts the milk down on his bedside table, and then places the cookies down in between where both of them always sit on his bed. They sit down, both take a cookie, and both take their glass of milk. 

“Okay,” Stiles starts, holding his milk like it’s a glass of champagne, “a toast.” 

“A toast,” Derek repeats, to confirm that Stiles is really and seriously doing this. 

“It’s been – almost four entire months,” he says, and Derek nods his head along with that, “when we first met, I wanted to run your head over with the front wheels of my Jeep.”

Derek nods his head again. 

“And now that we’ve been together this long, I still want to do exactly that –“

“Har, har.” 

“Anyway. I’m into you, I like you a lot.” 

“Same back at you,” Derek agrees. They clink their milk glasses, Derek going along with it even though it’s fucking idiotic, and then they sip. Stiles picks a cookie up off the plate and hands it to Derek, who takes it between two fingers and stares. 

Stiles watches him like a hawk as he takes a bite, and chews, and forces it down his throat. It tastes burnt, and like he didn’t use nearly enough sugar, and there are clumps that don’t chew the same as the rest of the cookie, and he thinks he crunches on an eggshell at one point. “It’s great,” Derek says around another mouthful, physically forcing himself to swallow and finish the entire thing, “it’s so good.” 

Stiles laughs, and shakes his head. “Okay,” he takes the rest of the cookie out of Derek’s hand, mercifully, “you don’t have to finish it, love, okay. Thank you for lying.” 

“Okay,” Derek takes a giant sip of his milk, washing the taste of the cookie clean out of his mouth. Stiles smiles at him, pleased and happy it would seem in spite of the fact that his cookies came out awful, and then he claps his hands together.

“Presents,” he says. Without another word, he’s reaching underneath the bed and pulling out the same snowman clad box that Derek had seen a week prior, only this time it’s sporting a truly over the top blue bow, and Stiles dumps it in between them with a grin on his face, patting it with his hand. Then, he pushes it into Derek’s lap, and shoves his wrist into his face to start maniacally chewing on the sleeve of his sweater as if he’s nervous. 

Derek undoes the bow first, tossing it aside, and then he starts ripping apart the wrapping paper, all while Stiles watches him intently. The last of the paper is torn off, and it reveals a plain white gift box that he likely bought from Target. Derek fishes the lid off, pushes aside some tissue paper, and pulls out the first thing in the box. 

“It’s the blueprints for New York City,” Stiles says, reaching out to run his finger over the silk of the tie in Derek’s hand, “or, at least, parts of it.”

Derek unravels it all the way and gets a good look at it – and indeed, there are blueprints. It’s hard to recognize it instantly as New York City for anyone who hasn’t had to look at them before, but Derek sees it plain and simple. 

“Do you like it?” Stiles demands. 

“I like it a lot,” Derek says, and Stiles grins at him, ears going a little red. Derek leans over and pecks Stiles on the lips, but then Stiles pushes him back and gestures to the box again. 

“There’s more,” he insists, pointing emphatically into the tissue paper. 

Derek raises his eyebrows and goes back in, coming out with a set of very serious and expensive looking pencils. 

“The guy at the store said those are the best pencils if you’re into sketching,” Stiles tells him, pointing at the label. “He said if you have any other kinda pencil, you may as well be a photography major. These are good for blueprints and – um. Other architecture type stuff.” 

Stiles knows dick all about architecture and has admitted to it time and time again, but just the sheer fact that he went out of his way to hunt and search for things that Derek might actually want, need, and use, speaks more of his character and caring than anything else ever could. “These are the best pencils,” Derek assures him, even though he’s literally never heard of this brand before. “We all use these, it’s all we talk about.” 

This is a fib that Stiles buys hook line and sinker, beaming at him. Derek likes the pencils, he really does – but he likes Stiles’ reaction to him liking the pencils a lot more. “There’s more,” he insists, and Derek reaches in and pulls out – one of those mugs from The Coffee Fountain.

The ones that no one ever buys. That sit in the corner next to Stiles’ table and collect dust. Derek can’t help himself. He throws his head back laughing, holding it in his hands and shaking with guffaws. 

“Now we’re not allowed to make fun of it anymore,” Stiles says, grinning himself. “You own one. You’re one of those people.” 

“I guess so,” Derek agrees, finally calming down enough to talk and look down at his mug with a smug smile on his face. He meets Stiles’ eyes, and then he kisses him again, harder than before. “Thank you. This is all great.”

“You’re welcome,” Stiles scratches at the back of his neck and looks bashful, “I’m glad you like it. Where’s mine?” 

Derek huffs, rolling his eyes. He makes slow work of gathering all his things back into his box, pushing all the ripped up bits of wrapping paper aside, while Stiles sits there bouncing his leg and chewing on his sweater sleeve some more, looking entirely too impatient for his own good. 

When he’s done getting himself situated, he reaches down into his backpack sitting at their feet – filled with his clothes and toothbrush for him to stay overnight instead of textbooks this time – and pulls out an envelope. 

He puts it in Stiles’ lap, and Stiles sits there for a moment, a bit of a frozen-still smile on his face, as he looks down at it. He meets Derek’s eyes, glances down at the envelope, and says, “and you scoffed at me for saying you got me a gift card.”

Derek grins. “That,” he says, “is not a fucking gift card. Open it.” 

Stiles gives him a suspicious look, but he picks the envelope up all the same and claws it open, fishing inside and coming up with a card. There are a couple more folded up pieces of paper stuck inside, but he goes for the card first, as Derek knew he would. 

Stiles snorts, looking at the picture of the Parthenon with Christmas lights photoshopped over it. “Where did you find this?” He asks. 

“I googled,” Derek shrugs, and Stiles laughs some more as he looks at it. 

“Topical as fuck,” he decides, nodding his head. He opens up the card, reads the words written inside, and then looks up at Derek with confusion. He holds the card up for Derek to read it, as if he didn’t write that shit himself, and raises his eyebrows.

“Look in the envelope,” Derek tells him, and Stiles does. He picks it up, pulls out the last remaining pages inside, and unfolds them carefully. 

He sits there for a moment, scanning his eyes over the page again and again. Derek wishes he saw the exact moment that Stiles realized what he was looking at, but Stiles is stock still, just staring and staring. After a solid fifteen seconds, he looks up, meets Derek’s eyes, and holds the page out for Derek to look at himself. “What is this?” He demands, voice very quiet. 

Derek examines the page himself and think it’s looks pretty clear – but then, that’s because he’s the one who went through the rigamaroll of booking it, so he already knows what it is. “It looks like you’re going to Greece this Summer.” 

Stiles holds the paper in his hands, and then looks down at it again. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He runs his fingers over the text, the big LOS ANGELES LAX -> ATHENS INTERNATIONAL, and Derek wonders how many times in his life Stiles has fantasized about reading those exact words. How many times he’s dreamed about holding a piece of paper like that in his hands. From the way that he’s still speechless, frozen still, staring, Derek can tell that Stiles is having a hard time even processing it. 

Then, Stiles clears his throat, and pushes the papers in Derek’s direction. “I can’t take this,” he says seriously, and Derek smiles. He puts the papers back in Stiles’ lap. 

“Yes, you can.” 

“No, it’s too much,” he insists, shaking his head. He takes the papers off his lap and gives them to Derek, again, though he seems much more reluctant to do it this time – as if he already expended too much of his willpower doing it the first time. 

“This is just the itinerary,” Derek laughs, giving him the papers back. “You can give it to me all you want, but the tickets are still in your name.” 

Stiles’ fingers shake when he takes the papers again this time, and he stares at those words some more. He breathes in deep through his nose, and when he lets it out through his mouth it comes out choppy. “Do you have any idea,” he starts, and then breaks off when his voice goes a little thin. He takes another deep breath, one single tear rolling down his cheek, and Derek grins. He’s never seen Stiles be so happy he’s cried, before. “My whole life.” 

“I know,” Derek tells him, putting his hand on Stiles’ back and gently rubbing it up and down. “Now you get to go.” 

Stiles cries some more, and then he wraps his arms around Derek and cries into his neck, his shoulder, holding on for dear life. “I’ve been trying to save the money,” he says, sobs actually, and Derek just pats him on the back and smirks over his shoulder. 

“Now you can use that money on the actual trip,” he says, and Stiles cries some more. It goes on like that for another minute or so, and then Stiles is pulling back and shaking his head. 

“I can’t take it,” he insists, and Derek rolls his eyes. 

“You’re going,” he reaches out and uses his thumb to wipe at the bottom of one of Stiles’ eyes, smiling at him gently. “No one deserves it more than you.” 

Stiles blubbers a little bit, and then he takes in a deep breath through his nose. “I know how much those tickets cost.” 

He probably has the price listings memorized, at this point. For the shitty, questionable flights on airlines no one’s ever heard of, it was somewhere in the eight hundred range, and Stiles would’ve been an idiot to pick any one of them, and he’s not an idiot, so of course he never went for it. Everything else – well. 

Derek has never been very interested in spending his money, before. It was all just handed to him pretty much for being born and existing, and he and his siblings were raised pretty appropriately, so when they got their money after turning eighteen they all sort of just put it away and figured it would come in handy at some point. For his part, Derek went to Europe for two weeks after graduation, and after that, hasn’t so much as even looked at it. 

He has a used car, lives in an apartment with Erica not much better than what Stiles can afford, and his parents pay for his rent anyway. He had planned to use the money after graduating college to help him do what he wanted to without having to work a shitty job on the side just to make ends meet, and nothing more. 

Really, the plane tickets barely made a dent. 

“Listen, it’s your biggest dream. I know that.” 

Stiles looks away, chin wobbling, and says nothing. He probably can’t even find the words. 

“I would buy you the whole country and bring it right to you, if I could. You’re going, and it’s not a discussion.” 

There’s some quiet, and then Stiles nods his head. “Okay,” he says, in a small voice. “Okay, I’m going. I’m going to Greece. I am going to Greece. I’m –“ he takes Derek hands, both of them, in his, and squeezes tight. “I’m going to Greece.” 

Derek frees one of his hands from Stiles’ and uses it to draw gentle circles around his wrist. “What are you gonna see?” 

Stiles snorts. “What aren’t I going to see? The Parthenon, the Temple of Athena, holy shit, _Delphi_ , Mystras, and –“ his eyes go wide, “Epidaurus.” 

“You like your present, then.” 

He receives a steady look for that. 

“Better than a kitten?” 

“Well,” Stiles taps his chin in mock thought, a smile tugging up the corners of his lips, “it’s second to a kitten, at least.” 

They spend some time playing with Derek’s new pencils, and Stiles sits and watches him work across a sketch pad to test them out. His eyes follow every single move of the pencil, transfixed, and then he says, “have you started working on your blueprints yet?” 

Derek frowns. “I don’t know what I want to do for that project.” 

“Is it just like building a tall building?” 

“I have to do an aerial model. So, the inside as well.” 

“Shit,” Stiles blinks. “Do my apartment.” 

Derek laughs, but he has to shake his head. “It’s gotta be something from my own head. I also have this huge woodshop project to do next semester as well. I have to build – something. Out of no more than six pieces of wood.” 

“I could do with a new bookshelf,” Stiles suggests, and Derek laughs again. 

“I think they want something a little more impressive than a bookshelf.” 

Stiles leans his chin on Derek’s shoulder and watches him work with the pencils some more, the fine lines and the careful marks Derek makes on the page. They’re both quiet for a while, nothing but the sound of pencil on paper, as Derek sketches out a pretty decent model of the inside of Stiles’ bedroom, wiping away the led shards as they break off. 

Stiles runs his hand down Derek’s back and breathes in deep, right next to Derek’s ear. “You leave the day after tomorrow,” he reminds Derek, and now one of them has finally brought it up. It’s sitting there in between them, and now they have no choice but to acknowledge it. 

Derek carefully works at Stiles’ window on the page, putting off the inevitable for as long as he can. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly, and Stiles’ fingers work at the back of his neck. 

“Are you going to be home the entire time?” 

“Yes. In my bedroom in my parents’ house and all.” 

Stiles huffs. Derek think that’ll be the end of that conversation, because what else is there to say, really? He works some more, Stiles pressed up against his back, and suddenly Stiles makes a small sound from the back of his throat. It sounds similar – but like something Derek has only heard before when – well. 

He turns to look Stiles in the face, and sure enough, he’s crying again. It’s not the same kind of crying he had done after getting his present – no, it’s an entirely different kind of crying. One that Derek has unfortunately become a bit accustomed to in the past month. 

“Hey,” he says, putting his sketch book aside on the bed, next to the uneaten and terrible cookies, and he puts his hands on Stiles’ shoulders. Stiles wipes angrily at his eyes and sniffles, looking down at his hands. “It’s just three weeks. It’s not even a month.” 

Stiles’ face contorts as he presses his lips down and tries to stop himself from crying anymore, but it’s a lost cause. He lets out a cracked breath and shakes his head. “Promise me,” he says in a low voice, and Derek blinks at him. 

“Okay,” he agrees slowly. “I promise it’s only three weeks.” 

“No, not –“ he wipes at his nose and meets Derek’s eyes head-on, brown rimmed in red and shining in the string lights. “…promise me you’ll tell them.” 

Derek breathes out through his nose. “I already promised you,” he says quietly.

“Again.”

“I promise. I promise I’m going to tell them.” 

“You’ll tell everybody,” Stiles pushes, and Derek looks away, but nods all the same. Here, in Stiles’ bedroom, with no one else looking at them, it’s all so much easier. It’s easier in the sanctum to make promises. When no one is around to hear it, you can promise anyone anything. Derek should know this. “And we won’t have to do this anymore.” 

“I’ll tell everyone,” Derek agrees. 

“I can’t do this forever,” Stiles warns him, and Derek knows that, he knows. “It makes me – so – it makes me this!” He gestures to himself, crying and upset, and Derek nods his head. “I feel crazy sometimes, you know? Like I can’t – I have no outlet for how I feel about you. It just…eats me alive.” 

Derek kisses Stiles’ forehead, and then pulls him up against his body, running his fingers up and down his arm. “I know that feeling, believe me I do.” As if there’s something inside of him, a feeling that no one’s been able to write down or get into words yet, that claws at him, tries to burrow its way out, and the two of them just stifle it again and again. 

Derek makes them stifle it. He knows it’s not fair, and he knows that it’s now. It has to be now. They’ve been driving themselves to the edge this entire time, and they’re there now, dangling off the cliff. 

“I’ll tell them,” he repeats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a funny story about the party at Lydia's - that is actually based on real and actual house parties I used to go to in Sophomore year. There honest to god was a night when the Devil's Rejects was playing and deadass if I wasn't so drunk I had to be carried out the house, I'd have ripped the plug out the wall myself. It was Christmas god damn day (I'm 99% sure - it was winter and it was a Holiday??? RIP don't grow up to be like me) and they rly did that to me OKAY LMFAO I'M DONE


	7. Peisistratos' companion was just a pretty girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the penultimate chapter...after this it's just one more chapter and then the epilogue

The first time an opportunity presents itself, Derek is sitting at the kitchen counter while his mother cleans out the fridge. She dumps an old container of yogurt, open and shoved into the back half eaten for who knows how long, into the garbage, scrunching up her nose. 

They’re alone in the house – Laura and Cora out doing some last minute shopping, and his father at work – and the only sound outside of the kitchen is likely the cat scratching at a curtain somewhere. He’s been home for two days, texting Stiles almost obsessively, and vegging in his bedroom, not speaking to much of anyone – resting and sleeping and watching television. 

She pulls a sticky glass of maple syrup out, holding it with two fingers, and frowns. “I could wash it off,” she starts, turning it back and forth. There’s likely only enough for four stacks of pancakes in there, and she sighs. “But, really, is it worth it?” 

It goes tumbling into the trash, and then her head is back inside in the fridge. 

_Stiles, 2:34 PM : Scott almost set the Christmas tree on fire  
Stiles, 2:35 PM : you know what he was trying to do? Take a wild shot in the dark.   
Derek, 2:35 PM : plugging too many lights in._

“And this?” His mother holds out an old container from the Cheesecake Factory, scrunching her nose up. “The last time any of us went there was October.” The last time Derek went there was two weeks ago, with Stiles. He purses his lips and looks back down at his phone. 

_Stiles, 2:36 PM : he put a lit pine scented candle underneath it so it would smell authentic. You can’t make this shit up  
Derek, 2:36 PM : well did it work??  
Stiles, 2:37 PM : at first! Now it smells like burnt tree. RIP_

“No, it was September,” she squints her eyes and frowns out at nothing, still holding the container in her hand. Then, she opens it up like dismantling a bomb, leans in and sniffs, recoiling immediately and coughing like she’s just smelled something so unspeakably horrible she has to remove the scent from all orifices as soon as humanly possible. 

_Derek, 2:37 PM : well, Scott’s a visionary. He succeeded and failed in equal amounts. Like Mark Twain  
Stiles, 2:38 PM : HA! Aw ): I miss you_

Derek frowns at his phone, rubs at his forehead, and then puts his phone face down on the table, sitting up. “Mom,” he says, and she finally discards of the takeout container, slamming it into the trash so hard it’s like it personally offended her. “Can I talk to you about something?” 

She looks at him, eyebrows raised. “Sure,” she says, giving him an open-faced look. “What is it?” 

There is a notebook upstairs in his room that has ten or so pages in it that are filled with his notes on how to even – do _this_. Filled with sentences crossed out and x’d out and scratched and ripped out, and not a single one of them ever sounded right. He couldn’t find the right words, like Stiles would be able to. But he didn’t want to ask Stiles for help. 

He wanted to do it on his own. 

He puts his hands on the table, and then he stares at them. “I – if there was someone…” 

She blinks at him expectantly, waiting. 

The words, the nonexistent ones he can’t even think of, die in his throat under her gaze, and he has to clear it to get their corpses out. He just shrugs and says _nevermind_ , pushing his chair out from the table with a screech. Her eyes follow him as he skips out of the kitchen and heads up the carpeted steps to their wide second floor, down the hall, to his bedroom. 

_Derek, 2:45 PM : I wish you were here._

****

Scott returns to Beacon Hills only a few days after Derek, and Derek hears about it the second it happens. He drives up to Derek’s house in the preserve, honks his horn right outside the door, and leans out the passenger side window leering with a grin on his face as Derek comes out onto the front porch, frowning. 

“Hey!” He caws, and Derek squints against the bright sunlight. “Wanna hangout?” 

“It’s nine am,” Derek offers, and Scott nods his head. 

“Breakfast! Come on, IHOP!” 

Derek frowns some more, but knows Scott well enough to know that there’s no getting out of this one. He holds his hand up like _one second_ , and hops up the stairs to his room to put on shoes, collect his wallet and phone, and descends the steps, checking his notifications. 

_Stiles, 6:30 AM : what’s funny is you’re still asleep  
Stiles, 6:31 AM : it’s 9:30 in New York and I’m up and eating cereal alone at my kitchen table!   
Stiles, 6:32 AM : the exclamation point is meant to make it sound exciting and not sad and depressing._

He climbs into the car with Scott, and he takes off out of the preserve, cruising along the dirt road wearing sunglasses and listening to Top 40 radio. It’s entirely too cheerful in Derek’s mind, considering the hour, but then Scott has a cup of coffee sitting and waiting for him in one of cupholders.

He takes a sip. A triple Americano with almond flavoring and almond milk. He can’t help but smile against the lid as he takes a second sip, and Scott grins back at him 

_Derek, 9:12 AM : Your dad is coming soon at least, right?  
Stiles, 9:14 AM : tomorrow! That exclamation point is actually exciting_

“I’m so jazzed to have met you this year,” Scott explains to him, taking the turn off onto the main road while his blinker click-clicks behind his voice. “I come back to this town every Christmas and Summer and, you know. Fucking die inside.” 

“Same,” Derek agrees. 

“Allison is here, so that’s cool,” he speeds down the road and taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “But sometimes I wish I had more, like, friend-friends left out here. Everyone worth knowing that I went to high school with left as soon as they could, like the rest of us. You know?” 

“I don’t have very many friends left in town here either. Because – like you said,” he leans back in his seat and watches the familiar trees and mountains of home zoom past, “everyone worth knowing leaves.” 

“So, anyway, I just wanted someone to chill out with,” he gives Derek a big grin. 

_Derek, 9:18 AM : maybe I’ll see him around town at some point when he gets back  
Stiles, 9:21 AM : he knows you, doesn’t he?  
Derek, 9:22 AM : knows me as in, knows my name, but I think he knows everyone’s name.   
Stiles, 9:25 AM : LMFAO he does, yeah. It’s his job. At least he thinks it is. Small town Sheriff and all._

They drive to IHOP and sit in one of the booths, eating pancakes and testing all the different flavors of syrup offered to them, and Scott is nice and laughs at Derek’s jokes mostly because he’s dopey enough to get them all, and Derek is also glad that he had met Scott this year.

For more reasons than just one.

“Hey, so,” Scott starts halfway through his pancake stack, forking off another triangle to bite at. “Allison is having a New Year’s Eve party since her parents are gonna be out of town. I told her I’d invite you!” 

“Cool,” Derek agrees nodding, “I’ll come along.” 

“Well, careful. Allison’s parties tend to get pretty wild,” he winks at Derek, and Derek sort of just nods his head. Allison is one of the most innocuous people he’s ever met in his life – a pretty cut and dry personality, middle-class, favorite artist is Taylor Swift, that kind of a person. Case and point, he cannot fucking imagine a party at her house would be anything but typical.

****

Derek, 5:34 PM : I’m invited to New Year’s at Allison Argent’s house   
Stiles, 5:55 PM : WATCH OUT!! She’s a party animal just you wait   
Derek, 5:57 PM : is everyone being sarcastic about that  
Stiles, 5:58 PM : we’re teasing lmfao  
Stiles, 6:02 PM : once, she got really drunk at a frat – this story is legend btw – also it doesn’t leave the confines of the thread – but she was super fucking drunk which is super uncharacteristic, and she found I shit you not a slingshot, used it to shatter a window, a vase, and a bottle of tequila before someone stopped her, and then she threw all the couch pillows out the window, and then she took her bra off   
Derek, 6:05 : oh my god.   
Stiles, 6:06 PM : LMFAO I KNOWWWWW   
Stiles, 6:08 PM : we only found out about the bra when she handed it to me to hold like twenty minutes later  
Stiles, 6:09 PM : that’s how I went to second base with a girl.

****

The second time the opportunity presents itself, Derek is at the dinner table with his family on the day before Christmas Eve. He’s got his plate all stacked up with food, a good homecooked meal like he always fantasizes about while he’s at school, and Laura is sitting there across from him, sipping wine and fiddling with the necklace she has on. 

_Stiles, 7:02 PM : my dad hates New York  
Derek, 7:03 PM : that’s what you get for taking him to the city   
Stiles, 7:05 PM : well I love NYC I thought he would too! But no, he hates it. He says it smells and is crawling with degenerates and the butt of society   
Derek, 7:07 PM : you should’ve just stuck to upstate. Everyone likes upstate_

“Who are you talking to on that thing?” Cora demands to know, leaning over like she wants to get a look. Derek shoves her away a bit by her shoulder, and she scowls, frowning into her mashed potatoes. 

_Stiles, 7:08 PM : my dad hates every inch of the state  
Stiles, 7:08 PM : anyway, I was adopted I think   
Derek, 7:08 PM : he’s just used to forests and wide open spaces, I guess. What’s he think of your place?  
Stiles, 7:09 PM : the crap shack!   
Derek, 7:09 PM: your dad is a very direct man, I take it._

“Seriously?” Cora snorts, and tries to reach for his phone to rip it out of his hand. “You won’t take your nose out of that thing.” 

“I’ve never seen you so glued to your phone before,” his mother chimes in, a sly smile on her face. She looks across the table at his father, who seems beyond uninterested, cutting apart his steak into biteable pieces happily enough. Once a person puts a plate of food in front of the man, he’s gone to the entire world. Laura could stand up and do a pole dance and he’d just eat his way right through it, oblivious as ever. 

_Stiles, 7:11 PM : haha, he just worries. He noticed one of the locks on our door was broken and spent the entire afternoon fiddling with it until it was fixed  
Derek, 7:11 PM : what else have you two been up to?   
Stiles, 7:12 PM : there was the city, and we went to a cool pizza place and then I took him to campus and showed him around, and we got Chinese. Tomorrow we do presents and fake Christmas and then he leaves ):_

“…have to pay attention to the lawn, and Derek are you listening to me?” 

Derek looks up. “What?” 

Laura taps a fingernail on her plate, so it clink-clink-clinks. “You haven’t even touched your food,” she says in a taunting voice, raising her eyebrows. “Who are you talking to?” 

“No one. Nevermind,” he puts his phone down and makes a big show out of biting into his half cold mashed potatoes, swallowing them down quickly. 

Cora smirks. “He’s talking to a girl I’d bet.” 

“Ooh, a _girl_!” Laura rolls her eyes. 

“Will you two shut the fuck –“ his mother clears her throat, and he back peddles, “…shut your mouths?” 

“It is a girl,” Cora confirms haughtily, turning back to her plate and looking very smug. “I thought you scared them all away.” 

“I thought you said you weren’t seeing anyone,” his mother accuses, but she’s leaning forward, desperate to hear the story of a girl who doesn’t even fucking exist, clutching her wine glass like a lifeline. 

“I’m – “ he pauses for a second, glancing down at his phone where a new notification from Stiles has lit up the screen.

 _Stiles, 7:15 PM : I wish you were here to meet him. He’d like you, there’s something similar in your personalities._

Derek clears his throat, glancing away from his phone and looking across the table at large. Laura has returned to eating her food, but is half-tuned into the conversation anyway, and his mother is looking at him expectantly, and Cora is just grinning from ear to ear, and his father doesn’t even know he’s at a dinner table with other people, most likely. “There is someone,” he decides to say, carefully. 

“I knew it,” Laura shrugs, and Cora titters in her seat, putting her fork down and leaning closer to him. 

“Well, well, well,” his mother takes a sip of her wine and then puts it down on the table. “Tell us about her, then.” 

Derek drums his fingers on the table top, and scans the faces of his family one last time. With just his mother and his sisters, he imagines the conversation would be interesting, but not very heated. They would hem and haw and feel awkward and weird and not know how to react, and Cora would probably start laughing because it’s how she deals with uncomfortable things, and Laura would just sit there and not know what to say, and his mother would drink more and clear her throat. 

With his father there, it’s hard to imagine it going any other way but horribly. Like, kicked out and forced to shack up with Scott for the rest of break horrible. 

“They’re a classical studies major,” he says evenly, and Laura makes a face. 

“What does she plan on doing with that? Living out of a cardboard box?”

Derek bristles. “Well, he’s a genius, so I fucking doubt it.” 

There’s not much of a pause. Derek thinks not a single one of them even noticed that he used a male pronoun instead of a female, for a quick second, but then Laura is snorting and rolling her eyes. “ _He’s_?” She mocks, thinking that he misspoke at most. 

This is where the pause comes in. His mother says, “first of all, watch your language,” and Derek thinks he could do it. He could sit up straighter and say _yes, he_ , and then they’d all go quiet, and it’d be out there. Finally. “…second of all, that’s a fine major. Lots of work involved. Reading, writing.” 

“I meant she’s,” Derek says, like the lowly fucking scum he is, and then sort of curls up in on himself like a dying leaf, hunching over his food. 

Laura gets an odd look on her face. She glances across the table, presumably making eye contact with their sister, and then looks at Derek steadily for another second or two. She’s perceptive. She’s always been. 

“I assume she wants to be a teacher, then?”

“Looks like there’s no other options,” Derek hedges, poking around in his food with his fork. 

“What’s her name?” His father finally pipes up, after spearing into a slice of steak with his fork. Everyone else at the table looks equally interested to hear the answer, and Derek can only think of when Stiles had been angry at him, demanding to know if Derek was going to tell his family that Stiles’ name is _Stacy_. It makes something ugly pool up in his stomach, and he takes his napkin off his lap, unable to sit here any longer.

“Can I be excused?” He asks, picking his phone up off the table. “I don’t feel very well.” 

Laura watches him critically as he vanishes out of the room and out of her sight, her eyes shrewd and calculating.

**

Stiles, 9:13 PM : I’ve gotta tell you something   
Derek, 9:13 PM : it’s midnight in New York   
Stiles, 9:14 PM : I know, it’s important!   
Derek, 9:16 PM : what is it?   
Stiles, 9:16 PM : hoooo okay. Soooo   
Stiles, 9:17 PM : I told my dad about Greece. Like I had to you know I did how was I not going to tell him lmfao   
Stiles, 9:17 PM : and we were talking about it for a while and the conversation sort of got away from me and he asked how I afforded the tickets and I couldn’t even manage the lie that I just saved up the money because he knows there’s no fucking way   
Stiles, 9:19 PM : and so I had to admit it was a gift. And then he asked me who I know that has the kind of money to just ship a friend off to Greece. And I said it wasn’t a friend and he got weird and demanded to know why I hadn’t told him I was seeing someone new and what happened to Kyle and he was asking me your name and Idk   
Derek, 9:20 PM : well did you tell him my name?   
Stiles, 9:21 PM : yes…Almonds   
Derek, 9:22 PM : ha. Ha.   
Stiles, 9;23 PM : no I said Derek. And he said when do I get to meet this Derek and I said…soon… ?   
Stiles, 9:23 PM : is that right? Is soon right? Are you mad?   
Derek, 9:24 PM : why would I be mad, Stiles?   
Stiles, 9:25 PM : OHHHH I’M SO RELIEVED LMFAO HE HAD ME BACKED INTO A CORNER AND HE’S A POLICE OFFICER HE KNOWS WHEN PPL ARE LYING   
Derek, 9:26 PM : I’m glad you told him, really

There are two knocks on Derek’s bedroom door, and Derek instantly recognizes the sound as Laura’s fist. He puts his phone down on his chest and says come in, and then his door is opening and his sisters are peering in at him. 

“Can we come in?” Cora asks, already half inside anyway. Derek beckons them inside and they close the door behind them, scurrying inside and making themselves comfortable on the bed around him, while Derek sits up to better address them. 

“What’s up?” He asks when they’re all situated, and then Cora is chewing on one of her nails – it’s a familial habit, Derek has always figured. 

“Sorry if I, like, exposed you and your relationship at dinner,” she says a bit sheepishly, and Derek shrugs.

“No big deal. It’s what you exist for anyway.”

She narrows her eyes at him, but then smiles all the same. “I didn’t mean to start the Spanish Inquisition.” 

There’s a pause, his sisters sharing another one of their meaningful looks, and then Laura is scooting a bit close to him on the bed, lowering her eyes. “You know,” she starts, clearing her throat, “if you ever wanna talk about anything…”

“I’m just in a relationship,” he shrugs, begging for nonchalance, “it’s not a big deal.” 

Laura looks at him, biting her lip, and then looks at Cora again. Cora runs her hand through her hair and puffs out a breath between her lips, adjusting herself on the bed. “If you wanted to, you know. Tell us anything.” 

Derek stares at them, and they stare back. 

“We miss you while you’re at school. You haven’t called a lot this semester,” Laura hedges, and Derek feels sheepish. She graduated last year, but she stayed in Beacon Hills and lives across town, so she still sees the family ten times as often as Derek does. Cora graduates high school in the spring.

He really hasn’t called much at all. He’s been avoiding talking to any of them as much as physically possible, if he’s being honest. 

Cora draws a shapeless pattern into Derek’s comforter with her finger. “If there were anything you had to tell us, we would – you know. We’d be cool.” 

Derek’s phone buzzes on his chest, and he knows it’s Stiles. Both of his sisters glance at it at the same time he does, and then they feign nonchalance, darting their eyes away at various corners of the room as soon as he catches them looking. 

“Okay,” Derek agrees evenly. They blink at him a bit, and then share a shrugging look with one another. 

“Just so you know,” Laura insists, shrugging one more time. “If anything ever did happen – you know. If dad – you know. We’d be on your side.” 

_Stiles, 9:30 PM : I love you, I miss you, come back ):_

****

Allison Argent’s house is as huge as Derek remembers it being from high school. There was the occasional house party here, and Derek went to his fair share of them, and it’s eerie to look outside of it to begin with, and another thing entirely to be back inside of it. That same spooky family portrait of Allison and her parents is hanging over the staircase, leering down at everyone who walks through the door, and Derek frowns at it and is glad a beer is put into his hand immediately when he and Scott walk through the door. 

She greets them after a few minutes of the two of them just wandering around seeing old faces and feeling freaked out about it, finally spotting them and coming over as soon as she can. She waves at Derek, accepts a kiss from Scott, and then she ushers them over to where she’s got the drink table set up. 

“I wonder how Stiles is doing back in New York all by himself,” she comments halfway through watching Scott mix together a truly disgusting looking drink, furrowing her brow and then looking up to meet Derek’s eyes with a smile. “You two seem to be pretty good friends.” 

Scott gives him a look, and Derek is still more or less feeling like a kicked dog after his failure of telling his family. His sisters had pretty much asked him, point blank, and he hadn’t said a fucking word. And don’t even get him started with the disaster that was his chance to come clean at dinner. His point is that he’s flopped, and he promised Stiles again and again, and Allison is harmless and nice.

He chugs a long sip of his beer, shrugs, and says, “we’re fucking.” 

Allison is alarmed, and then she quickly isn’t, blinking out at the party. “Oh,” she says, eyebrows raised into her hairline. It was possibly not the best way to phrase it, but Derek is just – at that point. The best way to do it is to just come out with the truth, a hundred percent. She wish-washes the information around in her head for a second, as if she’s trying to decide if it makes any sense whatsoever that he and Stiles would wind up together, and then she shrugs. “Well, okay. So how is he?” 

Derek smiles at her, and Scott pats him on the back even though he’s done the bare minimum. “His dad just got back to BH, so he’s all alone in the apartment now. Going a little stir crazy.” 

She nods her head, and takes a sip of her drink. “Huh. You and him,” she trails her eyes off to the side. She appears to still be processing it – processing that the kid she grew up with in this town is now dating another kid that she met all the way across the country but is from here as well. He imagines it might be a little difficult to wrap the brain around. “You know, I see it.”

“You do,” Derek says, surprised. 

“Sure, I do, I do, right?” She nudges Scott, who raises his eyebrows.

“Well, I see it. I’ve _seen_ it, if you know what I mean.” 

Allison scrunches her nose up and gives Derek a look. “He hasn’t seen anything,” Derek rolls his eyes, and Scott makes a face like _that’s what you think_ , and Derek laughs. 

“And, anyway, isn’t Stiles the best?” She smiles at him with all her teeth. “I get how someone could just, like, fall in love with him. Do you know what I mean? He has something about him. A very…I don’t know. It’s just a thing.” 

Derek remembers thinking the exact same thing when he and Stiles first met. He understands exactly what Allison means – there’s just something about him. He is who he is, openly, all the time, and that’s so mind-blowingly attractive it almost doesn’t feel like a person like him could actually exist. He’s like a character in a book, someone you’ve been inside the head of, but still don’t entirely understand.

“I think it’s great,” she reaches out and pats Derek on the shoulder. She mentions nothing, not a single word, about not thinking Derek was gay, doesn’t ask him how that _works_ when he’s only ever dated girls to her knowledge, she just smiles and shrugs and heads back off into the party to find her girl friends, leaving Scott and Derek to their own devices. 

“Cool,” Scott says, nudging Derek in the side. Derek agrees. 

They meander around the party for a while, and Scott runs into some of his Beacon High acquaintances and talks to them for a bit, always rolling his eyes the second their backs are turned and making some derogatory comment about them. Like, _she was so fucking obnoxious in school_ , or _he used to literally huff glue I can’t believe he’s still fucking alive_. Derek runs into more of his Beacon Prep acquaintances, of course, because that’s the school that Allison actually went to – and they’re all just fucking awful. 

Most of them still flash the keys to their fathers’ Lamborghini, as if anyone even gives a shit about that kind of a thing anymore, and talk with that pompous fucking attitude, and sneer at Scott like he’s scum under their shoes or something, which just annoys the living hell out of Derek to begin with. But, luckily, most of them are harmless, useless people who thought they were going to wind up being something, but are all just living off the rest of their trust funds, graduating in a semester or already done, and they’re back here in Beacon Hills, their final fucking resting place. Most of them are just absolutely and completely innocuous. 

Most of them. 

Scott turns his eyes across the room for a moment, and then he scowls – it’s an odd facial expression for him to have, so Derek is immediately interested. “Ugh,” he huffs, grabbing at the straw in his drink to stab it around in the ice, frowning. “I forgot to tell Allison about him.” 

“Who?” 

Scott looks down into his drink, and then he meets Derek’s eyes steadily. He juts his chin in the direction he had been glaring in a moment earlier, so Derek turns to get a look himself. When his eyes land on one specific person, he suddenly understands the fucking hostility. 

He looks different out of his uniform, older now and even more annoying looking if that were possible, but Zack Peterson isn’t the type of person you mistake for anyone else. He strides into the room with a hand in one of his pockets, smirking and carrying a bottle of liquor, and Derek and Scott stare at him. He walks right past them, heedless and careless, and Scott’s eyes track his every single move, narrowing as the seconds pass. 

It makes sense Allison wouldn’t know. Hell, at the time whatever had been happening between Stiles and Zack actually happened, Derek had no fucking clue, and he had, like, four classes with the kid that year. He never suspected anything. He never saw Stiles, not once. And, really, how does a conversation about all that come up organically? _Oh, yeah, don’t invite Zack Peterson to any future house parties, he was an abusive fuck that drove Stiles nearly to the point of suicide, by the by._

So, there he is, because Allison didn’t know any better, and invited him. Derek swallows. 

_Stiles, 10:22 PM : it’s already the new year here! Catch up, slowpoke!_

Derek makes the executive decision to not mention it to Stiles. Really, what would mentioning it do for anybody? Derek and Scott saw him, and will probably see him again and again sporadically throughout the night, and nothing will happen. He exists. Stiles doesn’t need to be reminded of it, no matter how much he likes to pretend he’s over it. 

_Derek, 10:25 PM : I’m at Allison’s house, partying, etc., drinking, etc.  
Stiles, 10:26 PM : I’m at Lydia’s house, partying etc., drinking, etc.   
Derek, 10:27 PM : you have a ride home??  
Stiles, 10:28 PM : uber.com   
Derek, 10:29 PM : good. I told Allison we’re dating_

Derek receives a flurry of emojis in response, and he smiles down at his phone screen as Scott chatters over his head about something or other. 

_Derek, 10:31 PM : Stay safe, will you?? I don’t need to worry about you, you know.  
Stiles, 10:33 PM : Aw… (: _

They drink a lot. Derek slugs down more beers than he can count, and Scott has been mixing his drinks with four different kinds of liquor all night so he’s already a lost cause, and they’re sitting at a table somewhere in this gigantic fucking house playing cards. Derek isn’t that drunk – granted, he’s drunk, but he’s not _that_ drunk – but Scott is obliterated. And obviously so. Derek has never seen him get so drunk before. At least it’s a holiday. 

Halfway through a game of Go Fish, Derek excuses himself to drink a glass of water and eat something, deciding to cool it before he winds up like Scott, and meanders his way down the long hall to the staircase. He thumps down the steps, spills out into the main room, and beelines it for the snack table. Once he’s there, he double fists some Cheetos and potato chips, shoving them all into his mouth and gobbling them down the way only someone who’s inebriated truly can. 

_Stiles, 11:56 PM : cyall me tomormorow ? ?883  
Derek, 11:56 PM : please tell me you’re being driven home right now   
Stiles, 11:57 PM : yes DAD  
Derek, 11:58 PM : text me when you’re home so I know you got back all right. Xx_

He shoves his phone into his pocket and eats some more chips. He grabs at a bottle of water and chugs it down halfway, thinking about Stiles drunkenly falling asleep in the backseat of some guy’s car on the ride back home from what was likely another one of Lydia’s terrible house parties. He’s seen Stiles a little bit drunk before, but never _that_ drunk – so drunk he can barely even send a fucking text. 

Everyone appears to be in rare fucking form tonight. 

He stands there for another moment or so, and is just making plans of putting some snacks into a cup and heading back up to the card game, when a familiar voice calls his name. Derek thinks to himself, _don’t you fucking do it_ , shaking his head and rolling his eyes to the ceiling. _Don’t you fucking even speak to me_ , but it’s already been done. 

Zack is striding toward him with a broad grin, waving his hand a bit. He’s got a drink in his other one, a tall one with more liquor than soda it would appear, and he crosses the room and the party to stand in front of Derek, right next to him, like they ever really fucking knew each other. “Derek Hale,” he greets, and Derek nearly recoils at the sound of his voice this close, at smelling his cologne and seeing his stupid fucking _face_. “Long time no see. I thought you moved to New York permanently.” 

Just from looking at him, Derek can tell he still has that same swagger he had in high school – this expectation that everyone should just fall at his feet and do everything he asks of them. He’s got bright blue eyes and a carefully styled mess of dark hair on top of his head, and when he smiles he looks like a toothpaste ad, and Derek gets what the attraction for Stiles might have been – and it just makes Derek so fucking angry. “Family still lives here,” Derek decides to say, keeping his tone very even. 

“Right,” Zack slugs a long sip of his drink. “I still live here. I fucking love this town.”

Zack loves this town, Derek thinks, because it’s the only place on planet earth that can stand him. It’s the worst place, really, down to the fine details, so of course he would belong here. 

“You go to…?” 

Derek rattles off the name of his college, and Zack nods his head up and down. Recognition flicks across his face for a moment, and then he says nothing, sipping at his drink. Derek hopes he can sense the awkwardness, the terse air around them, and will just wander and fuck right off, but of course, he doesn’t. 

Derek watches him sip at his drink, watches him reach into the chip bowl with his gigantic hand to get more and shove it into his idiotic mouth, and imagines, for just one second, punching him right in his idiotic fucking face. Just one good hit, knock him out, and be done with the entire thing.

Then, Zack opens his mouth, and says, “you go to the same school as Scott,” he swallows what’s left of the food in his mouth, takes another drink, and says, “never really liked that kid.”

There are so many god damn responses flipping around inside of Derek’s head, and he’s nearly drunk enough to start shouting every single one of them, but he closes his mouth instead and looks up at the ceiling. Scott is one of the most easily likeable people Derek has ever met. Zack likely hates him for one reason and one reason alone – because Scott must have known from the start that Zack was bad news, and tried to tell Stiles again and again before it was too late. “Well, this is his girlfriend’s house.” 

“Allison goes to your school, too, right?” Derek nods his head and Zack raises his eyebrows like it’s interesting, and then he gets another odd expression on his face. He doesn’t meet Derek’s eyes directly and instead stares out at the party. His cool, calm, entirely in charge façade falls away, and he frowns. “Stiles Stilinski goes there, doesn’t he?” 

For some reason, just the fact that he has the fucking guts to even say Stiles’ name makes Derek see red around the edges of his vision. The fact that he would even fucking dare to come here, to Allison’s house, and come over and speak to him, and even think he has any fucking right to exist at all…

He stands there for a second, puts his water down on the snack table, looks down at his fist, and decides imagining it just isn’t going to fucking do it. 

He grabs Zack by the collar of his shirt, and punches him square in the jaw. 

Someone shouts in shock as Zack stumbles back, his drink falling to the ground in a cacophony and clatter and ice scattering all across the wood floors. He spits blood out of his mouth, straightening up and looking at Derek dangerously. 

“What the _fuck_?” He hisses, and before he gets another word out, Derek hits him again. This time, when he goes down, he takes the snack table with him. He hits it hard, right in the center, so the entire thing collapses in on itself as he falls, chips and Cheetos and liquor spilling all over him. The party sort of parts a bit, exploding in a flurry of motion and sound, breaking apart to give Derek and Zack a wide berth. 

Derek looks at him down there, looking fucking ridiculous bleeding out of his mouth and his nose and covered in alcohol and pieces of chips, and he just – hates him. With every fucking fiber of his being. He thinks about Stiles being sixteen and young and afraid, and Zack being eighteen and from the rich school across town and taking advantage of him and hurting him just because he could and he just…

Derek climbs on top of him, grabs him by his shirt again, and Zack tries to reach up and claw at Derek’s neck. In the corner of his eye, Derek sees Scott bursting out from the crowd, stuttering on unsteady feet to get a better look at the action, hovering there for a moment on the outskirts. Derek pulls Zack’s hand away from his face, and uses his own free hand to hit Zack again, and again, and Scott put his arms in the air as if he just scored a goal in football, and hollers, “ _yes!!_ ” 

There’s this suspended second of time where Derek thinks he’s going too far, hitting Zack hard enough he thinks he hears something crack, but he doesn’t stop. He physically can’t. He has no sympathy for him, none whatsoever. He’s scum. 

“Yes, oh my God, yes! Hit him!” 

The crowd laughs, and hollers, and finally some of the other boys there have the presence of mind to grab Derek by his shoulders and heft him up and away from where Zack is barely cognizant, dragging him up and across the floor even as Derek struggles and tries to get free to go back and start all over again. 

“You fucking psycho!” Scott is yelling, and laughing, and then he’s right there in Derek’s face as the other boys set Derek up against the farthest wall away from Zack. He grabs Derek by the shoulder and pats him repeatedly, just laughing and laughing. “The cops are coming!” He yells over the rest of the yelling, and as soon as he says that, people are scattering like fish in a pond. 

There’s a minute, Derek rubbing at his face and shaking his head. His hands are vibrating, shaking, the adrenaline coursing through his veins making him feel shocky, and he thinks he could just punch his fist clean through the closest wall. 

“The cops are here!” Scott yells, and then he tries to take Derek by his arm to guide him out of the living room, mostly empty now save for the few stragglers who are too drunk to really make a run for it, and then Zack and Zack’s friends hovering over him. 

Before they manage to even make it into the kitchen, the cops indeed walk into the living room, two or three of them looking around with grim faces and frowns at having been called to a stupid fucking party on New Year’s Eve.

Derek see Stiles’ father, and pauses. He’s got his hands on his utility belt, glances in Derek’s direction, and Derek thinks _he doesn’t really know me_ , or at least – not in the way he should. He has no idea who he is to his own son. His son, who he literally saw just days ago. 

“Come on, let’s –“

“Derek Hale,” the Sheriff says to him, and then his eyes skirt right to Scott and he sort of twitches. A facial twitch. “Scott.” 

“Hey!” He says, too enthusiastically for the situation. “Sheriff!” 

There’s a long staring match between the three men, and then he slowly slides his gaze over to where Zack is being hefted up by the other two officers who are asking him what happened, and Derek swallows. “You two know anything about this?” 

“No!” Scott says at the same time Derek says, “what?” 

Another pause, and then Zack is yelling. “He just started _fucking_ hitting me!” He’s pointing an incriminating finger in Derek’s direction, and Stiles’ father is staring right at him. There’s a second where Zack keeps going on and on about how Derek is crazy, Derek beat the shit out of him for no reason, Derek this, Derek that, and the Sheriff just stares. 

He knows, at least, who Zack is. He knows better than anyone else. 

He clears his throat, turns to meet Derek’s eyes. He says, “is that true?” 

Derek considers for a moment. There were about two dozen witnesses, true, but they’re all scattered across town and won’t be talking if only to avoid getting busted for their own misgivings tonight, and Scott won’t admit it – but then Zack’s friends are all nodding in agreement and yelling and pointing, and Derek growls under his breath. “Yes,” he snaps, and he moves to take a step forward like he’s going to finish the job but Scott grabs him. The Sheriff, however, does not. He almost lets him walk right on past him to grab at Zack, and Derek doesn’t even have the time to dissect that for the moment. “I did, I fucking did, and I’d do it again, you _piece of shit_!” 

“What’s your _fucking_ problem?” Zack, in spite of the fact that he’s a walking bruise and bleeding wound, tries to move forward himself. They nearly meet in the middle again, but the Sheriff pushes Derek back with a hard hand, and Zack’s friends manage to hold him back.

“Enough,” Stilinski shouts, holding his hands out between the two boys just in case one of them is going to go in for the fucking kill again. There’s quiet, Derek panting and Zack glaring, and then the Sheriff runs his hand over his jaw. He looks at Zack. “I assume you’re pressing charges.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Zack hisses, and Derek just grits his teeth. 

“Great,” he mutters under his breath, and then he’s looking right at Zack with a steady frown. Derek can only imagine what’s going through his mind right about now. Derek knows that Stiles had refused to pursue any charges against Zack when he was seventeen, and now the Sheriff has to sit at a desk and go through paperwork of that same piece of shit pressing charges against somebody else. The thought must be maddening. “Let’s just – scatter. You, get the hell out of here,” he points at Zack, who grimaces and bares his teeth a bit. 

“Why don’t you ask him what the fuck his issue is,” Zack hisses, turning on his heel to walk away. Right as he’s about to head for the door and be gone from Derek’s life hopefully forever, he turns right back around and gives Derek a narrow eyed glare. “Or is it about _Stiles_?” 

“Why don’t you shut your _fucking_ mouth,” Scott snaps, and then he’s moving past Derek’s shoulder, or trying to, but Derek shoulders him back, but Scott tries coming forward again. 

“Watch what the fuck you _say_!” Derek yells, and then Stilinski is just looking baffled and angry in between them, the mention of his son’s name seeming to paralyze him enough that he doesn’t move to break up the fight again. “I don’t want to hear you ever say his name again, do you fucking hear me?”

“Get out,” Scott points his finger to the door, and Zack stands there and he stares. He looks at Derek, and he looks, and he looks, and he knows. 

He knows what this is. Derek can read it all over his face. He would have expected Zack to laugh at him, to call him a faggot or say some offhand comment about what a slut Stiles is or something equally awful, but he looks – angry. He’s looking at Derek like he wants to try and actually manage to get a hit in this time. 

Then, without another word, he turns and leaves.

****

Stiles, 9:01 AM : I just got woken up on New Year’s Day by a call from my father   
Stiles, 9:02 AM : any guesses for what he had to say???

****

“Are you out of your mind?” 

Derek sits at his dining room table, in the house he grew up in, hands and knuckles wrapped up in medical tape, and frowns down at the table cloth. They haven’t changed the table cloth for as long as he’s been alive, he thinks – it’s the same pearly white lace he remembers from childhood, and something about seeing it now, his bloody bandages from beating the living shit out of a guy last night, makes it seem almost surreal. 

“You’re a grown adult, getting into fights at house parties!” 

“It was one fight,” Derek mutters under his breath, and his parents share a look with one another. “It’s not like I’m chronically barging into parties and starting fights, all right? Just one fight.” 

“And what a fight it was,” his father looks at him incredulously, “barely a scratch on you, while Zack is apparently sending us hospital bills we’re supposed to pay for.” 

“So, now you’re mad because I won the fight.” 

“You’ve never been in a fight in your _life_ ,” his mother butts in, and he thinks about correcting her with the real statistic, but realizes that it won’t help his case at all. “It’s wildly out of character and immature for you to – this is a legal matter. I feel you’re not grasping that.” 

Oh, Derek grasps it. He grasps the full spectrum of ramifications for his actions, from the bills he’ll have to pay just because Zack is a whiny bitch and insisted he had brain damage just from Derek beating him up, all the way to the restraining order, and the this, and the that. The only thing that’s lucky about this entire thing is Zack agreed to drop any real charges against Derek so long as Derek footed the bills – so there’s that. 

Derek had half a mind to tell him to go fuck himself before giving him even a dime of his money, but his parents coaxed him into it either way. It was the smarter option. Stiles would even agree. 

“For no reason you pick a fight with this kid you haven’t spoken to in over a year,” his father puts his hands on his hips and gives him a steady look, “absolutely no reason, except you were drunk and stupid at a house party.”

“I had a reason,” Derek spits, sitting forward in his chair and gritting his teeth, “I had a lot of god damn reason –“

“Let’s just calm down,” his mother suggests, but it’s too late either way. 

“You guys know Stiles Stilinski?” 

“The Sheriff’s kid?” He receives two pairs of blinking eyes for even mentioning the name at all, and his parents share a look with one another. 

“Everyone knows Stiles,” his father says – and it’s almost an out of body experience to hear his dad say that, considering – well. Considering every fucking thing that’s happened these past four months. “What does he have to do with any of this?” 

“He and Zack – Zack used to _hit him_. All the time. Okay?” 

There seems to be a lack of understanding in the room, all of them on separate pages, because his mother just purses her lips in disbelief, and his father adjusts his glasses on his face, a mystified expression behind them. “So because in high school Zack Peterson bullied Stiles Stilinski, you took it upon yourself…”

“ _Bullied_? It wasn’t like that,” Derek shakes his head and scowls at his hands some more, picking at the bandages in agitation. “They were together. They were _dating_ and Zack beat him, do you understand what I’m saying?” 

Derek waits for either of his parents to recoil in disgust at the sheer thought; to call Stiles a faggot or insist that Zack isn’t gay, to banish Derek out of the house for even daring to defend a homosexual, for _something_ to happen. But they just look at one another again. 

His dad takes his glasses completely off his face and starts meticulously wiping at them with his cleaning cloth, frowning at the lenses as he works them over. “Even if that’s true –“

“ _If_?” Derek is aghast. “Ask the fucking Sheriff, since you’re so unsure! He’ll tell you! Better yet, ask Zack himself! I’d love to hear that conversation.” 

“Listen, Derek, we’re sorry that happened to your friend,” his mom says in a placating tone of voice, all gentle and soft and serious, “and – everybody likes Stiles, but that doesn’t mean you dig up ancient history at a New Year’s Eve party and cause a scene and nearly get arrested.” 

“I think Stiles would say the same,” his dad agrees, and Derek’s eyes nearly bulge clean out of his head. 

He turns in his chair so that he’s facing his father entirely, stares at him for a second. “How would _you know_ what Stiles would or wouldn’t say?” he asks, voice dangerous. “You’ve never even met him, you don’t know him, not like –“ he swallows and averts his eyes, “…not like I do.” 

“What is this about?” His dad demands, perplexed and baffled by another one of Derek’s outbursts. And of course he would be, his mother too – Derek isn’t being very forthcoming. He hasn’t been forthcoming with them about any of this since it all started. “You’re acting absolutely insane.”

Derek knows that to be the truth. It’s just how Stiles makes him feel, like Stiles had said himself. Out of control, and breaking apart at the seams, and half out of his mind, all the fucking time. Really from the second Zack walked in that door there was never any guess whether or not Derek was going to hit him – of course he was. After what he did to Stiles, of course he was. It was a given. He should’ve known. 

“Stiles and I,” he starts, and then doesn’t finish. He grits his teeth and stares out the window, to his backyard, where there’s still an old treehouse buried in the big maple on the edge of their property. He thinks, bizarrely, that he wants to take Stiles up there sometime just to share it with him, one of the best memories from his childhood, and Stiles would love that. He loves stupid shit like that. 

This is his third opportunity. He sits there with his mouth open, the words almost there, almost, dangling on the edge of his throat, clinging to his tongue. Almost.

****

Stiles, 2:11 PM : why would you do something like that?? Scott wouldn’t have even done something like that. He’s wanted to for a long time, but this is ancient fucking history, here   
Stiles, 6:25 PM : hey, we have to talk about this   
Stiles, 9:01 PM : I’m not angry, let’s just talk about it  
Derek, 10:02 PM : what else was I supposed to do??  
Stiles, 10:03 PM : uh, NOT FIGHT HIM? LMAO…  
Derek, 10:05 PM : you wouldn’t press charges against him back then and now you’re angry that someone finally gave him what he deserves?   
Stiles, 10:10 PM : I take it back I don’t wanna talk about this! Actually!   
Derek, 10:11 PM : I can’t believe you’re angry I hurt him.  
Stiles, 10:13 PM : that is NOT what I’m angry about  
Stiles, 10:14 PM : I’m angry because YOU are acting crazy and YOU could’ve gotten hurt  
Derek, 10:16 PM : I would absolutely love to see Zack fucking Peterson try to hurt me at all.   
Stiles, 10:20 PM : we get it, you lift weights, blah blah   
Derek, 10:22 PM : Look, please don’t be angry with me. My parents are angry enough for everyone and I’m paying Zack’s bills and I just   
Derek, 10:22 PM : he deserved it.   
Derek, 10:23 PM : maybe I don’t know the full spectrum of your relationship with him since you tell me nothing about it, but I know enough to know that  
Stiles, 10:26 PM : I don’t know why you always act like you have a right to know about all of that. If I wanted to tell you I fucking would  
Derek, 10:27 PM : the fact that you won’t even talk about it says to me that you’re not as over it as you act

Derek’s phone starts ringing less than a minute after sending that text, Stiles’ name flashing across his screen, and he raises his eyes to his bedroom ceiling. The last thing he wants to do right now is fight with Stiles, but he’s gone and done this and Stiles likely deserves at the bare minimum a conversation, so he answers. 

“What do you want to fucking know? Huh?” Stiles is angry, and of course he is. His voice sounds different when he gets like this – normally, he talks low and deliberately, but when he gets mad, he picks his words much less sparingly and spits it all out clipped and steady. 

“I just –“

“I haven’t spoken to or seen him in – years. Years. And I fucking like the bit where I don’t have to hear about him, either! But then, you know, you go back home for three god damn weeks, and suddenly he’s –“ there’s a pause, and Derek closes his eyes. “…what. Do you want. To know.” 

Derek clears his throat and tries to keep his voice even. “You not talking about it is…it just seems like repression.” 

Stiles snorts on the other end of the phone, an entirely unattractive sound for him to make. “I know. They talked to me about that for the three entire days I spent in psych hold in the hospital. Remember that?” 

“God,” Derek growls and covers his eyes with his hand.

“I don’t talk about him, and I don’t think about him, and that’s fine,” he says, and Derek tries to argue it, but Stiles talks right over it. “Why are you forcing me to dig all this up?” 

“I’m _not_!” 

“Once,” Stiles starts, and Derek wants to tell him to stop, but he suddenly doesn’t have the voice for that, “he hit me so hard in the car that my head smacked into the window and I blacked out. When I came back to, I was bleeding and he didn’t even – he just kept saying if I told anyone he’d –“ 

“I don’t need the fucking –“

“And you wanna know how we broke up?”

“Stiles.”

“You wanted to know!” 

“I just want you to – I just –“ he growls again under his breath, and then tries to collect himself. “…I just want to know that you’re not afraid of him anymore. You shouldn’t be.”

Stiles is quiet for a long time. Long enough that Derek has to check his phone screen to make sure he hasn’t hung up. “It was a long time ago,” he says evasively, and Derek closes his eyes again. “He’s a sociopath. I figured that out about him, and I got out.” 

There’s no use in continuing this conversation, Derek knows. Stiles is stubborn about most things, but about this particular topic especially. He talks about Zack in generals and ambiguity exclusively, and maybe that’s just how he needs to do it for his own sanity. Maybe it also isn’t in his best interest, but then it’s not exactly for Derek to decide. He taps his fingers on his chest, stares at his ceiling some more. “Don’t be angry with me.” 

“I am,” Stiles says, dead serious. “But I guess I understand why you did it. You were drunk, I’d take it.” 

“A bit.”

“If you see him again,” Stiles starts, and then sighs. “Just – don’t. My father doesn’t like having to say his name and I even less like having to hear it. Especially with you involved.” 

“I’m sorry,” Derek says, and Stiles hums on the other line. 

“It’s okay,” he seems to decide that it is right then. “And, you know, you’re lucky he didn’t get a hit in. Kid throws punches like a rhino, I would know.”

“That’s not funny.” 

Stiles hisses a laugh, gravelly through the receiver.

****

Derek holds Stiles’ copy of the Iliad in his hands and doesn’t know what to do with it. His book mark is halfway through, wedged in between the start and the end, and he brought it back to Beacon Hills with him for break to finally manage to finish it. 

Also, so he could have a piece of Stiles at home with him. He flips to a random page and traces over Stiles’ familiar handwriting, following the dips and grooves of Stiles’ letters with a finger. He flips some more, just turning from page to page and reading Stiles’ words more than the actual text of the book. It’s honestly more interesting that way. 

Truth be told, Derek isn’t that into the Iliad as a concept either way – no matter what Stiles says about it, how he talks it up, Derek just get can’t get his mind around half the things that are said. But he reads how Stiles underlines and points arrows at explanations, and he wonders if he could just read the entire book through Stiles’ notes. Likely, he could, and would enjoy it a thousand times more than the actual story.

The way Stiles writes about Achilles and everything he does and everything he says is like reading a dissertation on some little kid’s crush – since most of this was written when Stiles was 16/17, that makes sense. But to read just how much and highly Stiles has always thought of him, how brave he is, how according to Stiles he gave up everything and gave into his own grim prophecy for someone else. 

Derek slaps the book closed and pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head like ridding it of ghosts that crawled up out of the book through the smell of ink and paper. Stiles wraps his arms around him and demands for Derek to promise him, again and again, and Derek sits there in his bedroom, alone, not nearly half the man that Stiles wants him to be.

He throws the book across the room and doesn’t sleep much, that night.

****

Stiles, 4:32 PM : heard there’s a KILLER party at Scott’s house tonight   
Stiles, 4:33 PM : who are you going to attack this time, I ask myself   
Stiles, 4:33 PM : you know, Jordan Carr once looked at me funny, if you’re looking for someone to fight   
Stiles, 4:34 : not to mention in senior year when I came out, he called me a faggot. It’s time to draw arms   
Derek, 4:36 PM : I’m going to block your number   
Stiles, 4:38 PM : are you going to the party??   
Derek, 4:39 PM : I guess so. Three days left of break, might as well go to a party   
Stiles, 4:53 PM : right, then it’s back to the old ball and chain  
Derek, 4:55 PM : I’m staying at yours after I fly back in right??  
Stiles, 4:56 PM : yes ! Your side of my bed is starting to lose its dent from your body. We don’t remember what you look like  
Derek, 5:01 PM : who’s we?  
Stiles, 5:02 PM : me and my bed ;)

****

The party at Scott’s house is much more to Derek’s tastes. It’s not like Lydia’s house, where there are drugs that make Derek uncomfortable and people vomiting all over the place, and it’s not like at Allison’s house where it’s mammoth and huge and everyone and their dog is there. Even though the setting is completely different, his childhood home instead of an apartment in upstate New York, it feels altogether almost eerily similar to a party at he and Stiles’ shared apartment. 

Of course now there are none of Stiles’ prized possessions for people to toss around and mock (once, two kids spent an entire ten minutes throwing that statue of Clytemnestra back and forth over Stiles’ head until Stiles hit one of them in the face and absconded with it back to his bedroom in a huff), and Stiles isn’t perched in the kitchen smoking out of a bong he made from an Arizona iced tea can. But when Derek walks inside, he can almost imagine Stiles being here in this house, as he most certainly spent most of his time when he was growing up and hiding his entire life from his father. 

He feels Stiles’ ghost here. It makes him go tight around the shoulders, a heavy sinking weight in his chest. Guilt sweeps over him, unbidden, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. 

Derek brings along his sisters, even Cora, who’s all starry-eyed at the prospect of being allowed at a college party. The only reason she’s been invited is because she first of all begged until Derek had no choice to give into it, second of all because it’s _Scott’s house_ and Scott would sooner let Derek eat his eyes out than allow anything bad to happen to Derek’s little sister in his own home, and third of all because Laura will be watching her like a hawk anyway. 

So there she is, all the excitement and mystic at the prospect of a college party being shot to death right in front of Derek’s eyes as she looks around herself. There’s a game of Monopoly occurring very seriously in one corner of Scott’s living room over a bowl of popcorn and a whole smattering of empty beer cans, and ESPN is playing on the television, and most people are just standing around talking and drinking and smoking. 

Cora frowns. She clearly expected a kegger or something – a real blow out. Meanwhile, Scott is holding court in the kitchen talking about the best way to win a game of Uno. 

“Don’t drink too much,” Derek instructs her as he sends her off to pal around with Laura for the rest of the night. She draws her eyebrows together but says nothing, trailing away toward the kitchen where Scott is waving a deck of cards around in the air enthusiastically. 

Derek takes stock of the people around him. Some old kids from high school days he thinks he vaguely remembers and that would vaguely remember him, but there’s not a single soul from Beacon Prep in sight. In a way it’s a little disappointing because now he has no one to speak to, but in another way it’s fucking amazing. He grew weary of all of those kids the second week of freshman year of high school, anyway. 

He spends some time drinking on the couch, and then he gets invited into a conversation by two girls who introduce themselves as names Derek couldn’t be fucked to remember. They sit there talking on either side of him, friendly enough and vaguely interesting, but they’re party people. 

At a party, there’s always two kinds of people. People who are actually potential future friends, and party people. Party people you speak to for three hours one night, and it could be the best conversation of all time, and you guys could be up on top of the roof blowing bubbles out into a skyline and laughing and having the best time if your lives – but never ever see them again. Except, maybe, at another party. Seeing them anywhere else is an automatic _avoid avoid avoid_ situation. You just can’t talk to them without a beer in your hand. 

As such, Derek talks to them for an hour about architecture, and their own majors, and how they’re going to change the world and so is Derek and aren’t they all great and isn’t this the best time of their lives and isn’t being twenty-something like being a god, and then he just stands up and walks away without a second thought. They keep talking, and Derek keeps walking. 

He goes down the hallway and pilfers another beer out of a six pack that’s just been tossed to the floor haphazardly. It’s lukewarm, but it’ll do. He sees Stiles standing at the backdoor, and Stiles leaning up against the wall in the hall, and Stiles climbing up the steps too fast for Derek to catch, and he rubs at his face and feels small. 

There was a time when Stiles was a sixteen year old kid, and he sat on the couch in the living room that Derek just sat on after Zack hit him for the umpteenth time, and he cried and asked Scott why it was so hard, why he was born like this, why no one understands, if he was ever going to grow up and find someone who wasn’t ashamed of him, like that. 

Derek looks down and finds that he’s been standing in the hallway drinking for long enough that his beer is half gone, and he frowns, and stands. He can hear Scott’s voice from the kitchen laughing and talking, and he just stands there, and he wonders what Stiles is doing right this very second. He could text and he could ask, but he’s drunk and stupid and Stiles is likely asleep anyway. 

Laura appears in the hallway, seeming clear-eyed, sipping at a can of coke. She’s driving Cora home, after all, and she’s always been the more responsible one. It was bred into her from being born first, Derek guesses. 

“Where’s Cora?” Derek asks once she’s close enough. 

“She’s fine,” she waves off his concern, “she’s talking to Scott. I think she has a crush on him.” 

Derek raises his eyebrows. It doesn’t concern him at all – she just likes him because he’s attractive and seems so much older and smarter and worldly, and anyway Scott is too far up Allison’s ass to even be aware that other females exist in a sexual way, let alone an eighteen year old still in high school. 

She stands sipping her coke for a moment assessing him. She assesses the state of his beer, the set of his eyes, the way he’s leaning up against the wall for support. She pronounces him drunk with her eyes and pushes some hair behind her ear, smiling in that sisterly way that means she’s up to something. “You know who’s here?” 

“I cannot imagine.” 

A long slurp of her soda. “Your old friend Lindsey.” 

Derek turns and meet her eyes head on. Her lips twitch upward as though in a smile, and then she presses her knuckles against them to both suppress and hide it. “Is she really,” Derek dead pans, swishing what’s left of his beer around in its bottle and watching it foam, and foam, and foam. 

“She is,” Laura eyes him very seriously. 

Lindsey was that girl in high school that never for five seconds knew Derek existed but decided suddenly in the summer after freshman year of college that he was actually a male and she could see him with her own two eyes. They wound up hooking up at the first party of the summer down by the lake, and Derek thought that meant they were going to start dating – and then she, you know. Never called him again. 

Derek was heartbroken and depressed about it for a solid month before he moved on after realizing that Lindsey was a specific type of a girl looking for a specific type of a guy. Of course she didn’t want to date Derek. And besides, it was enough to know she found him attractive enough to sleep with. 

Now, apparently, she’s at Scott’s party and drinking and wouldn’t you know it, so is Derek. 

“Too bad you’re in a relationship,” Laura goes on, shrugging. “Some mystery girl back in New York. Lindsey looks like she’s on the prowl.” 

“There’s no mystery girl back in New York,” Derek says evenly, flouting the maxim as well as he can and scanning his eyes down the hall to the living room, where he strongly suspects Lindsey is hovering somewhere. 

“Oh?” Laura’s eyebrows raise in mock surprise. 

“Oh,” Derek repeats back at her. He finishes off his beer and gives her the dirtiest look he can manage, now that he’s realized she was just trying to wheedle information out of him the way she’s been doing since they were just little kids. She purses her lips back at him.

“You know, I would understand,” she says, and Derek just shakes his head at her. “You can’t just get drunk at parties all the time and pretend there’s nothing going on!” 

Derek is already walking away from her on unsteady feet, into the living room, where he flops down into the couch that Stiles has sat on, and looks up at the ceiling that Stiles has looked up at. There’s just so many factors, he thinks. There’s just so much going on. He checks his phone out of habit, and it’s midnight and Stiles is long past asleep, alone in his bedroom, and Derek is here. He’s here. Thousands of miles away. 

Across the room, Lindsey spots him and smiles, and Stiles is thousands of miles away. Derek sits up a bit, glancing at the ceiling one last time. It’s thousands of miles, he thinks. He rises from the couch Stiles has cried on and makes his way across the room Stiles has walked across to where Lindsey is hovering in the doorway between the foyer and the living room, and the closer he gets, the more she backs away into the shadows of the foyer, where there are no lights and no one else milling around to see them or hear them. 

“Lindsey, hey,” Derek says with a wave. She smiles at him in the dim lights and sucks on her straw with purple lips, and Derek remembers that girls do that. Girls wear lipstick, and Derek used to get lipstick stains on his cheeks or dragged over his lips or on his chest. 

“I thought you were too good for us here now,” she raises an eyebrow, and Derek watches the movement obsessively. She is so fucking pretty, he thinks. She has always been so fucking pretty. 

It blows his mind that he hasn’t magically stopped thinking so, with Stiles waiting for him somewhere. Like as though because he’s fallen in love with Stiles, a man by all counts, he can no longer find women attractive anymore. But she tosses her long hair over her shoulder and smiles all purple at him and has got black wings coming off of her eyelids, and Derek thinks he could fuck her. 

“New York City is so, you know. High class.” 

“I don’t live in the city,” he answers, swallowing a bit heavily. “I thought you had gone off to Tokyo or something.” 

“It was a study abroad in Asia about two years ago,” she looks at him a bit critically, and Derek remembers being knocked out by that look when they were younger. “Has it been that long?” 

“Well, I remember how long it’s been, since I was the one who never got a call back.” 

“Aww…” she smiles and reaches out to ruffle his hair, like placating a puppy. “No hard feelings.” 

“Right,” Derek agrees. You can’t have hard feelings towards girls like Lindsey when they’re standing in front of you. You go into your bedroom and get angry and write bullshit poetry about them and swear off them for life, and then they come back and stand there wearing the same perfume and a crazy pair of shoes and you forget to ever be mad about anything ever again.

It's like Stiles, Derek thinks. But there’s no perfume or high heels with him. It’s – ink across his skin. And long limbs, and a direct laser of eye-contact of brown and intensity. He can’t understand how he can be attracted to both kinds of looks, that girlish confidence of a pretty and smart girl and then the hard and firm glare of Stiles’ assessing gaze, at once. 

“I think you’ve gotten taller,” she comments, pointing at him up and down. 

“An inch, maybe.” He has random growth spurts, from time to time. 

“I love when guys get taller,” she bites down on her straw, and she knows exactly what she’s doing as she does it, and Derek has to swallow again. “You think you’ll ever stop growing?” 

She leans closer into him, so close Derek can smell her floral shampoo, her fruity perfume, the cream of makeup all over her face. Derek breathes her in for a second, and she moves closer as if taking a silent cue the way confident girls are so good at. Derek thinks, for just a second, that he could. 

He could have sex with a woman, and he could prove something to himself, and to the rest of the world. Prove to Laura she hasn’t uncovered some big secret and prove to his parents he’s actually got a girl somewhere for them to meet and invite over for dinner, and he’s just attracted to girls, only girls, and there’s no big secret. And he wouldn’t have to hide anything. 

She leans in close to his face, just about to kiss him, and Derek looks as much of her up and down as he can from this angle. He doesn’t want her, he knows he doesn’t. He just wants to go back to how things were, in some tiny little drunken idiot part of himself, because it was easier, and he’s a coward. 

He takes her by the shoulders and gently moves her away, and she goes. She’s so small underneath his hands, gentle and fragile and Derek swallows and thinks about broad shoulders with blue and orange ink across them. She blinks at him, confused, and he has to sigh through his nose and lower his head. “I can’t, I – I can’t,” he says. 

“You can’t,” she repeats. 

“I’m – there’s –“ again, he sighs, “there’s someone else.”

“Oh,” her eyebrows raise, and she looks a little disappointed, but not angry. She takes a step back herself and smiles with a blush on her cheeks, likely embarrassed at having come on to a guy who has someone else waiting for him. “Too bad for me.” 

She stands there awkwardly for a moment, and so does Derek, because there’s no rulebook on what anyone is supposed to do after almost kissing, almost fucking. She smooths her hands over her short skirt, and then tosses her hair and squares her shoulders, like she’s brushing the whole event off. “Well,” she says, smiling more genuinely this time, “congratulations on having a someone.” 

She starts to move, clicking across the hardwood on her heels, and Derek takes her by a skinny wrist. “Hang on,” he says, and she turns. She’s half illuminated by the lights in the living room, half still ensconced in the darkness of the foyer. Derek meets her eyes, and she looks at him curiously. “Can I…can I tell you something?” 

Lindsey leans back into the foyer, so the light falls off her white shirt. “Okay,” she agrees. In spite of all else, Lindsey has always been a _nice girl_. A little thoughtless and on occasion self-centered, but she’s kind. It’s why Derek always liked her so much. 

He looks at her for a moment, at her big brown eyes and her curly black hair, and then looks at his hand on her wrist. Tan skin against darker skin, a big hand against a tiny wrist. And he likes it, but he – he can’t fucking explain it. It’s driving him insane. “Do you know – Stiles Stilinski?” He asks.

She sort of smiles a bit, but he can tell she’s feeling weirded out. Derek is being drunk and weird. “Everyone knows Stiles,” she says, and Derek isn’t even surprised at the answer anymore. He was the only person who didn’t meet Stiles in Beacon Hills, at the fountain, somewhere in a random corner of the universe at all, because the world was saving him. Derek wouldn’t have been ready, when they were kids. 

Maybe he’s not even ready now. 

Derek swallows, looks right in her eyes. “I’m fucking him,” he says evenly, and she sort of just moves her eyes away and makes a bit of a face. It’s not disgust, or contempt, or shock. It’s just…a face. Like she’s thinking about it for a second. 

“I,” she starts, and Derek is hanging on her every last word, desperate, begging her to please just make him feel like he’s fucking normal for ten seconds, “didn’t know you were bi.” 

Bi, Derek thinks. The words hang there for a second, and she looks at him, and he looks at her, and she looks surprised and baffled and also a little amused. 

“Stiles is cool,” she goes on cautiously, mistaking Derek’s trepidation for something else. “I guess I knew you guys went to the same school, but you know. He is not a person I thought you’d wanna be with. But, cool. Cool. Derek?” 

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, because he’s just been staring blankly at her, keeping his hand on her wrist. He pulls it away as if burned. “I’m drunk. I’m –“ 

She frowns at him, concerned, and he waves her off. 

“I’m sorry about this entire thing,” he says, and she stands there, pretty and confused, a ghost of who Derek used to be and what he used to think about. He doesn’t know who he’s talking to when he says that – but it’s not her. 

“It’s cool,” she assures him, pulling down on the hem of her shirt. “Tell Stiles I say hey.” 

Derek turns and walks back out into the party. Everyone there looks at him, and watches as Lindsey leaves right after him, and their eyes all follow them as they move to separate areas of the party. Derek goes on a hunt for Laura more or less instantaneously, and finds her easily enough, propped up on the counter drinking another soda and talking with Scott about something or another. 

“We have to go,” Derek says, and Scott is looking at him. Derek can’t read that fucking look, he can’t even think about it, but Scott opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, his eyes going wild for a moment, and Derek moves away before he gets the chance. 

“Drunk enough?” Laura demands to know, raising an eyebrow, and Derek just nods. No more conversations, he thinks, no more fucking talking, about anything. No more of anything. He just wants to be – he just wants to be silent, somewhere. 

Stiles’ bedroom. Far from this house and this town where all the demons of his childhood and adolescence lurk. Here, there is a bathroom across town where Stiles tried to kill himself, where the blood was scrubbed out with bleach but where the floor remembers. There is a room in this house where he examined a black eye in the mirror, where Scott said he’d kill him he really would and Stiles said _no, I’m in love with him_ because he only learned love in closets and quiet places. There is a school parking lot where he got called a faggot and was pushed into the dirt. A tree he climbed and wondered if he’d fall and break his neck and if it would be better that way. 

A place where Derek has done this to him.


	8. the Strait of Salamis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okayyyyy so all that's left after this is the epilogue !!

Derek, 10:23 AM : boarding the plane now   
Derek, 2:03 PM : in Chicago now. Time difference. Tired.   
Derek, 5:04 PM : in New York  
Derek, 5:30 PM : Erica has picked me up and I’m coming over. Sleeping or something?

****

There is no answer at Stiles’ door when Derek knocks. Not the first time, or the second time, or the third time. And Derek is just starting to get concerned, thinking about bursting through the door himself, when Scott pulls it open and gives him a very dark look. 

“Stiles isn’t feeling well,” he says evenly, and Derek frowns. 

“He’s sick?” He demands, and Scott nods his head once, tersely. Derek wonders if Scott is sick, as well. Without another word, Scott closes the door in Derek’s face, and Derek looks down at his bags, frowns even more deeply. Wonders how sick Stiles could possibly be, if he’s turning Derek away on the first day he’s back from California. 

The dodging goes on for another two days. Derek calls, and Stiles doesn’t pick up, and he’s forced to listen to the insipid voicemail greeting over and over again, never leaves a message because Stiles won’t listen to it. He goes over to his apartment one more time, and this time not even Scott opens the door for him, and he rubs his forehead outside the door and curses and tries calling again. 

This time, he leaves a message. 

“Look,” he says, moving down the hallway of Stiles’ building, practically punching the button for the elevator. “I don’t know if you’re angry at me or if you’re really that sick or what, but can you please just – talk to me? Call me back? Answer one of my ten thousand texts?”

He spends the rest of the night practically flying out of his skin every time his phone gets a notification, but it’s never Stiles. 

Classes won’t resume for the semester, Derek’s last and final one of all time, for another couple of days – and that means even though he lurks around the parking lot and the Coffee Fountain waiting for Stiles to show, Stiles never does. He has no reason to be here, not until school starts up again. Then Derek will be able to corner him and demand to know what the fucking problem is. Until then, he’s shit out of luck. If Stiles doesn’t want to talk to him, no matter how crazy and upset it makes Derek feel, then Stiles won’t talk to him. Point blank. 

Still, Derek goes to the fountain and glances at the table in the corner, next to the dusty old mugs and in front of the window, and then looks down at his hands. Lydia is manning the register as he approaches, and she chews bubblegum and eyes him steadily, frowning a bit. “I come here because it’s my job,” she tells him before either of them say anything else, “but there are a dozen coffee places in town that aren’t in this hellhole. So, why, on break, are you standing there right now?” 

Derek scowls, and his ears turn red, as he can feel. “Can I just get my Americano?” 

She sort of looks at him for a moment, up and down, and then pulls a sixteen ounce cup off the stack and writes his order perfectly by memory across it. She pops a bubble with a harsh bite, and then begins entering the information into the computer. She glances up at him briefly as she works, and then says, “you know, there’s a winter semester sort of party going on at mine tonight.” 

Derek perks up. “Oh, yeah?” 

She nods her head and rattles off his total. Derek hands her a five, which she processes and makes change of, and then Derek points to the tip jar and the rest goes in there. “Nothing major,” she goes on, shrugging as if it’s all so casual and nonchalant. But he can tell there’s something there underneath her cool exterior that she won’t speak out loud and that Derek doesn’t think he particularly cares about. “You could come, if you wanted.” 

Under any other circumstances, Derek would be saying no. He’s seen what goes on at parties at Lydia’s house, and thinks he would very much like to never have to live through that fucking experience ever again. But there’s one important factor about this particular party and this particular situation that has him near immediately nodding his head yes.

There’s not a doubt in Derek’s mind that Stiles will be there. Lydia would invite him, and she did, if the look on her face is anything to go by – and Stiles has said more than once he can’t just not go to a party at Lydia’s. 

“Sure,” he agrees. “I’ll come.” 

“Cool,” she says like she could care less, and then points him away from her register to get out of the way of the rest of the line.

****

Derek pulls up outside of Lydia’s house and sees very much the same sight he had seen when he first saw it with Stiles – a crowd of people outside even in the cold, smoking and drinking and looking insipid and rowdy. He frowns at the sight, meticulously scanning that front crowd for any signs of Stiles, but finds none. He drives ahead and finds a parking spot a couple of blocks away, walks the rest of the way to the party with his hands in his pockets and his breath fogging up in the air. 

It gets cold in Beacon Hills, but not quite like this. He’s frigid by the time he gets to the party, and he’s in absolutely no mood to have fun, scowling as he walks up the steps of the front porch. He more or less bursts in through the front door, creaking as he does so, and slams it behind him. People pay him no mind, continuing on in debauchery and tomfoolery, while Derek just peers into the dining room, unzipping his coat and sniffling. Stiles isn’t there.

He goes to the living room, where the television is flashing across everyone’s faces again, though with something much more tame that Derek barely notices this time around, and Stiles isn’t a single one of those faces. He draws his coat tighter around himself and heads for the kitchen, where again, Stiles is nowhere to be seen. He scans the room again and again, as if just double checking, and then he just hovers there, unsure what to do or where to go from there. 

Lydia is there, however, and she’s in another one of those nice dresses and nice pairs of shoes that sticks out oddly when compared to everyone else and the entire house at large. She puts a drink in his hand, one that Derek barely looks at, and looks him up and down. “You don’t look very nice.” 

Derek is wearing a rumpled green shirt he had ripped out of the laundry, some jeans that are in much the same condition only also sporting some spaghetti sauce stains, and a beat up old leather jacket he’s had since senior year of high school. No, he does not look very nice. “Have you seen Stiles?” He asks her, and she sort of frowns at him and shrugs. 

“He’s around. I saw him.”

“Where?”

“Hm. It was about an hour ago.”

“Did he leave?” 

“Not to my knowledge.” She gives him a steady look. “Interesting you wanna know so bad.” 

“Oh, don’t mindgame me,” he snaps at her, to which she just buries her mouth in her drink and sips, looking entirely unfazed. 

“I saw him in the back, last,” she juts her thumb to her back door, lurking near the pantry where Stiles and Derek had hidden last time they were here. That seems like a lifetime ago now, when Derek imagines it in his head. Stiles kissing him and pressing his body up against Derek’s and holding his hands and saying his name. Lifetimes. 

Derek scowls at her one last time for good measure, and she shrugs in response as he goes, stalking past her on heavy feet. 

The backyard is open and not that full. He stutters off the tiny back porch and nearly doesn’t see the small grill ensconced in the darkness, almost trips over it but catches himself at the last second. The ice in the drink Lydia had given him clatters together, which is his reminder that it’s there at all.

He takes a couple of steps on what seems and feels like a cobblestone walk way into the yard, but he has to squint to see anything or anyone. He sees shadows and silhouettes, and some of them turn to look at him, but none of them greet him. Derek frowns and walks forward some more, thinking about shining the flashlight on his phone across all of their faces, but then thinking better of it at the last second.

Walking backwards, he looks around for some point of light, and finds the best is coming from a streetlight in the back alley, beckoning him over. He sighs nice and deep, and slowly trudges his way toward it, if only to get out of the darkness. 

He stands underneath it, in the reach of the light as far as it will go, and then he just…is there. Hovering on the outskirts of a terrible party, with what is likely a terrible drink in his hand, and he can’t find Stiles anywhere. It’s cold out, somewhere in the twenty degrees, and Derek sniffs against it and hovers, and doesn’t drink his drink. 

This is the most pathetic he’s ever felt in his life. Lydia must be laughing so hard at him right about now, chasing after Stiles like some lost dog, getting nothing for his efforts. She’s always known what was going on between them, he thinks, just a little bitterly. She’s one of those people who just figures things out, and she had them figured out lightning quick, Derek knows it. From the very fucking moment that Derek tried to order Stiles’ drink, she’s known. 

She puppeteered him here, pretended like Stiles was here, just to get back at him. For what, Derek doesn’t know, but he’s too cold to ponder it for very long. He moves his legs a bit to warm his body up, scanning across the dark faces in the backyard and seeing nothing, nothing, nothing. 

He turns to the back alley, all lit up, and sees trash cans and a cat scurrying past, and thinks he could really use a fucking cigarette right about now. Or a drink. He glances at the one in his hand, frowns at it, and figures he’ll just have a few sips and drive himself back home, to sit alone in the dark, calling Stiles again and again.

Derek is just lifting his cup up to his lips, turning his head to the left and away from the rest of the yard, when his drink gets knocked clean out of his hands. The plastic clatters to the stone walkway underneath his feet, and the ice and alcohol and soda spits itself out, and Derek is alarmed. He turns to find the person or the thing that did this, confused and disoriented, and as soon as he does, he gets a solid fist to the face. 

He jerks back, groaning loudly, and then brings his hands up to his nose – Jesus Christ, is his nose fucking broken? – and when he pulls his hands away and opens his eyes once the first crackling wave of pain falls over him, he sees Scott standing in front of him, just on the edge of the light from the alley. It spills across his face, and Derek stares. 

There’s this look in his eyes like he’s getting ready to throw another punch, and blood is oozing down Derek’s face steadily, dripping its way onto his lip so he can taste it, and Scott just stares, and pants, and looks murderous. He doesn’t look drunk, which is either more alarming or less alarming, Derek can’t decide. 

“Scott,” he says, because he at least has the presence of mind to know that getting into a fist fight with Scott at Lydia’s insane party isn’t exactly something he wants to do, “you just fucking punched me.”

“Yes, I did,” he agrees, eerily calm for all that’s going on. “And I’ll do it again. One second.”

“You’re not hitting me again,” Derek tries to reason with him, and Scott shakes his head and cracks his knuckles, and Derek thinks _Christ, I’m really going to fight Scott, and I have no fucking idea why_. 

“You have some real balls showing your face here!” 

“I was _invited_!” 

“By who?” Scott demands, stepping closer into Derek’s personal space bubble. Derek jerks back on instinct, holding one hand out as if to defend himself, and Scott just snarls under his breath. “I should fucking – just –“ he lurches forward, fully intent on socking Derek right in his fucking jaw or eye this time, but then, Stiles is there. 

He slides in between the two of them, shoving Scott back with one good _huff_ of a push, sending him sprawling a bit indignantly back into the grass. Derek watches the muscles of his back move with a sort of detachment, phased and disoriented by all of these proceedings, and then Stiles, like a ghost, is turning to look right at him.

Derek hasn’t seen him in three weeks. He looks the same, of course he does, but there’s something there in his face that wasn’t there when Derek had left him last. He looks tired, bags under his eyes, a frown deep in his mouth, and when he looks at Derek, he doesn’t look at him like he used to. 

He looks at him like they’re meeting again for the first time. A stranger, standing too close. 

“I want you to go,” he says with no preamble, serious and solemn and cold, and Derek just blinks and furrows his brow. 

“You won’t return my calls,” he shoots back lightning quick, and Stiles gapes at him as if _he’s_ the one who’s surprised. “You won’t answer my texts. You ignore me, and you want _me_ to fucking _leave_? This isn’t your house.” 

Stiles looks murderous, and he lifts his arm. Derek would never for five seconds think that Stiles would hit him, so he doesn’t even flinch even as Stiles’ arm is coming right for his fucking face. Of course, Stiles doesn’t hit him. He uses the sleeve of his flannel to wipe at the blood all over Derek’s face, pressing his forearm against his leaking nose to stop any more blood from coming out, and it’s so intimate and a bizarrely kind gesture, in light of the situation, that Derek is frazzled speechless. “You think I would fucking call you?” 

“What?” 

“You think I wouldn’t find out? That’s a better fucking question.” Stiles’ eyes are so close to his own, the scent of him right inside of Derek’s nostrils, and he doesn’t know what to say or do. “You come back here, and you come crawling back to me –“

“Did I miss a fucking memo?” He demands, finally tired of being on the wrong fucking page from everyone else, apparently. 

Stiles looks so offended he can’t speak, for a moment. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then does it again and again, as if words honestly escape him. He shakes his head back and forth, gives Derek this disgusted look, and then Scott is there again, right beside him.

“Everybody knows!” He shouts, and Derek looks between the two of them with big eyes, probably looking certifiably ridiculous with a bloody face and Stiles’ forearm shoved up against his nose. “Beacon Hills isn’t that big of a place, and word gets around! Not to mention, uh, you fuckin’ genius, you were in _my house_!” 

“Let’s go,” Stiles hisses, moves like he’s going to leave, but Derek grabs him, holds onto his arm in a vice grip, and Stiles stops. Meets his eyes. 

“ _What_?” Derek asks him, sincerity and desperation enough in his tone that Stiles seems to just for one second take pity on him. 

He inhales through his nose, looks around them as if to make sure there’s no one else around – but there are. There’s a handful of them milling about near the pool, watching with a sort of detached interest as what has to be the thousandth fight of the school year occurs right there on the back patio, and Stiles frowns. 

“Inside,” he snaps, and Scott holds his hands out like _seriously_? 

“I thought we weren’t talking to him,” he snaps, even as Stiles starts moving inside and Derek has no choice but to follow him. “Now we’re inviting him inside?”

“I’m not going to publicly out him,” Stiles hisses under his breath, and Scott looks like he agrees with the point at least a little bit, but still turns over his shoulder to give Derek the single dirtiest glare of all time. They go through the back door and into the mud room, shoes and rain coats hanging above a washer and dryer, and then Stiles is leading Derek up the stairs while Scott just stands there on the landing with his arms crossed over his chest, watching them go with a scowl on his face. 

He'll stand down there and listen to the entire conversation, Derek is sure of it, but he gives them some semblance of privacy. 

They walk into a dark hallway, where the music is quieter and all the doors are closed, and the only lights are coming from somewhere else, somewhere off in the distance. They’re silhouettes in the dark, but Derek can still see Stiles’ face as bright as anything else. 

“You had sex with Lindsey.” He accuses, but it’s not said like an accusation. It’s said like fact, like solid undebatable fucking irrefutable fact, and Derek gapes at him. 

“What? _What_? No!” He shouts, and Stiles doesn’t even flinch. “No, I fucking didn’t, who the hell told you that?” 

“Please,” Stiles rolls his eyes with the sarcasm. “Everyone knows, everyone _fucking_ knows. Of course, I wasn’t there, so I heard last. I got to hear it from everyone else, every other possible fucking person, that Derek Hale and Lindsey whoever-the-hell had sex at Scott’s party, my best god damn friend’s house –“ 

“That didn’t even fucking happen,” Derek growls, moving forward like he’s going to touch Stiles, take him by his shoulders like he’s done thousands of times, but Stiles jerks away, frowning. “We just – I just –“

“You just what? You wanted to – prove something?” Stiles looks disgusted. “You wanted to prove that you’re not gay, that you’re not –“

“I’m not gay,” he says, and Stiles looks like he about has an aneurysm.

“Oh, my God!” He shouts, loud enough that more people than just Scott are likely to have heard it. “I know you’re not gay, I’ve always fucking known that! Bisexuality _exists_! Pansexuality _exists_! All kinds of other words and labels in the fucking universe exist! You’re so _stupid_!” Stiles shoves Derek’s shoulder, but Derek doesn’t even budge. “You’re such a fucking idiot, I don’t know why I ever fucking liked you, all this fucking time I’ve wasted!”

There’s a moment, where Stiles just takes a step away from Derek and puts his hands on his hips, breathing shallowly through his nose. He stares out at nothing, down at the ground, past Derek’s head, down the stairs, and Derek can’t read his face. There’s no expression there. It’s blank, empty, eyes only slightly wider than usual, while he just – stands there. 

Blood slides down Derek’s face without Stiles there to block it, and he doesn’t bother doing it himself. 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Stiles finally says in a low voice, shaking his head at himself and frowning. “I shouldn’t have called you stupid for that, I apologize, I’m sorry. You’re not – you’re not stupid. You’re not dumb, because of all this.” He looks at Derek hard, that through-to-the-soul look. “You’re confused. That’s – maybe I can’t be angry about that.”

Derek clears his throat. “I didn’t have sex with Lindsey,” he insists, and Stiles just looks at him, “I didn’t. I didn’t. It was nothing. She wanted to, and maybe I – maybe I wanted to, just for a second. Just to…” he trails off, shakes his head at himself. He’s so ashamed, and he didn’t even really do it. No, but he almost did, and it’s almost as terrible, and these are the things that people have to live with. “It scares me. How much. I think about you. And I…”

Stiles looks like he might believe him, eyes narrowed as he tries to process all of this. “You didn’t,” he repeats, looking for confirmation. 

“We didn’t.” He clears his throat. “I couldn’t. Funny how you didn’t even fucking ask me first, or talk to me –“

“Oh, now it’s my fault,” Stiles hisses, and Derek pinches the bridge of his nose, wincing at the sting.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. We didn’t even kiss. And something else,” he moves closer to him, and Stiles just stands his ground and glares, eyebrows pulled together, “I told her about you and I!” 

Stiles lets out a breath and glances down the stairs, down the hall down the stairs out into the rest of the party, and then he looks back. He’s got this look on his face that Derek can’t describe. He opens his mouth. “But you didn’t tell your parents.” 

Derek is going to try and argue it, but he can’t. He wants to say _I almost did_. Or _I tried my best_. Or _I just got nervous_ , or _I’m not like you_ , or something, anything. But not a single word comes out. And it doesn’t matter what Derek ever thought about doing with Lindsey, what Derek told her, what they did with each other in the darkness of Scott’s foyer. 

Derek promised. Stiles cried and begged him, _begged him_ , and Derek promised. And now they’re standing here, in this house, and Stiles is just looking at him. Hurt, and disappointed, and heartbroken, and Derek is doing it all over again. 

“I wanted to,” he tries, and Stiles has no reaction to that. “I wanted to so badly. Stiles, I wanted to, I don’t want to – I don’t want to keep doing this with you,” he reaches out for Stiles’ hand, but Stiles pulls it back, and Derek just keeps talking. “It’s just hard for me, it’s fucking hard, and oh my God, I left your book in my bedroom at home,” he palms his forehead, frowns, “I just left it there, I’m so sorry, I’ll have my mother mail it back to me. I’ll – I just…”

Stiles is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “that book means a lot to me,” in a low voice. 

“I know,” Derek says quickly, reaching for him again, getting dodged again. “I know, I’m so sorry.”

Stiles stands there, silhouetted from the light at the end of the hallway, almost silenced by the sounds of the party beneath their feet, and Derek can’t see his face, not all the way. “We tried,” he abruptly says. There’s finality there and it feels like something snapping – the last vestige of control over the situation either of them had. They’ve lost it. Something. “It didn’t work out.” 

Derek can’t stand it. He comes close to where Stiles is standing and takes him by his shoulders, even as Stiles tries to pull away, so he can look him in his face. It’s lit up only by what dim lights are streaming in from downstairs and the window with the streetlight at the end of the hall, but Derek can see all its details the same way he always has. The eyes, the lashes, the lips, the nose, the skin. “You’re not trying right now,” he snaps, and Stiles starts shaking his head and opening his mouth to try and argue, but Derek talks right over him, “you’re giving up, this entire fucking thing, you’re just going to fucking quit!” 

“I can’t try any harder than I already have –“

“I’ve given this my entire – everything – and you won’t –“ 

“You won’t,” Stiles corrects, sharp like a whip across Derek’s face, and he has to be quiet. He knows Stiles is right. Stiles has done as much as he can, as much as he ever could, and Derek is still dragging his feet. At a certain point, it stopped being fair. They long passed that point and Stiles…he did try. He did. 

But Derek is terrified of Stiles walking away, so he grips onto his shoulders even tighter, out of fear of what’s slipping through his fingers even as they’re speaking. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Tell me what you want me to say.” 

Stiles looks away, eyes drifting off to Derek’s side, and his mouth opens, and closes, and nothing comes out. 

“Please. Let’s just talk some more. We can – we can work it out, we always work it out –“

“Well, I can’t this time!” Stiles is shouting at him almost out of nowhere, and he chops Derek’s hands off of him swiftly with the back of his own. “I can’t do this, you’re not fucking listening to me! I can’t even stand here talking to you right now, it’s killing me, this entire thing, all of it, I can’t even barely look at you!” 

“It’s not my fault!” Derek tries this, helplessly, because he wants to hear Stiles agree. He wants to hear Stiles coddle him and run his fingers through his hair and be more gentle with him than he’s ever deserved, like Stiles always has been.

Stiles isn’t gentle anymore. Not here, not now, not after everything. His eyes are hard and his jaw is tight. Derek has taken the softness clean out of him, ran him empty, and now he’s just – he’s tired. “I can’t be with someone who can only be with me when the lights are off,” he says in a low voice, and Derek takes a step back, looking down, scared of the look on Stiles’ face. “I love you, but you’re fucking tormenting me.” 

“I thought that’s what love was to you,” Derek says, cruel, because that’s how he is, at the end of the day. “Isn’t that what you read about in all your stupid fucking books?” 

Stiles looks at him, right in the eyes, like he’s seeing crystal clear through Derek’s exterior, down to the center of him. Where he’s just scared and sad and alone, like a little kid, lashing out because he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s unnerving, and Derek swallows hard, looking away as soon as he’s able. 

“I’m finished,” Stiles says. “We’re done.” 

Stiles walks away, his footsteps muted by how loud everything else around them is, and Derek stands and watches him. He thinks that if this were any of Stiles’ books, any of the movies on Stiles’ bookshelves, any of the things Stiles has written about, Derek would follow him. Chase him down the stairs, where everyone who’s anyone is drinking and laughing in a big crowd in the living room. And Derek would grab Stiles by his shoulders right then and there, and kiss him in front of everyone. He wouldn’t care. He’d be like Stiles wants him to be. 

But Stiles vanishes down the stairs, his shadow chasing him instead of Derek, and Derek leans back against the hallway wall. He presses his back against the paint, and then crouches down, his head in his hands. This isn’t how anything was supposed to happen. 

Derek thinks the last time he cried was sometime when he was fifteen years old – and he means, _really_ cried. Not just shed a tear or two, or sniffled quietly to himself in his bedroom, but _cried_. He does now. He cries, in the silence.

Stiles only ever learned love in quiet places. Derek tried to force him back into one. It was never fair, and Derek is sorry, and that means nothing.

****

_Derek,_

_Found this in your bedroom while I was tidying up. I see it belongs to your friend Stiles. If he’s home for the Summer, invite him for dinner sometime! It’s been a long while since I’ve had the chance to speak with him, and I’ve always very much liked him._

_Love, Mom._

Derek takes the book in his hands, fresh out of its box, and just holds it. He doesn’t open it. He doesn’t read any of the things Stiles has written, doesn’t read the story of Achilles, and he puts it down on his kitchen table, and leaves it. He doesn’t think he deserves it, right now. 

_Your friend, Stiles._

He and Stiles were never friends. They were never, never friends.

****

_“Does that hurt?” Stiles gestures to the blood that’s gaping out of the back of Derek’s foot, his heel, and tilts his head to the side like he finds it more fascinating than anything else. He’s hunched down on the ground, just staring and staring as the blood pools up around their feet, and he doesn’t even so much as flinch when it runs over his toes._

_Derek looks down at his wound himself, grimaces. “It’s not so bad,” he says._

_Stiles smiles at him, bizarre and intimidating, and wrong. Stiles doesn’t smile like that in real life. He holds his wrist out, the blood oozing and festering down his arm from a large slit across the center of it. “See mine?” He asks. “See this?”_

_“Does that hurt?” Derek asks him, and Stiles smiles that same not-him smile. He thrusts his wrist in Derek’s direction again, and the blood splatters across a bathroom tile, and then Derek is standing there over Stiles while he bleeds out, and bleeds, and bleeds, and Derek just stands there. “Does that hurt?”_

He shoots awake in bed, and finds immediately that his hands are shaking. He sits up all the way, presses his hands to his face and rubs his eyes – and he’s still shaking. His dreams have always been a bit mythic, as he’s said before, but this time it feels almost too close to real. Derek can’t stop thinking about Stiles bleeding out of that scar on his wrist, can’t stop seeing it behind his eyes, and he can’t help himself.

He reaches onto his bedside table and grabs his phone, observing the time is past four in the morning, and is immediately finding Stiles in his contacts. He presses call and has it against his ear, and then he sits and listens to the ring, ring, ring, his hand pressed into his forehead.

“Come on,” he mutters into the dark, jiggling his knee up and down. “Come on, baby, pick up.” 

Miraculously, Stiles does answer. His voice is groggy when he picks up, as though he’s just been woken from an incredibly deep sleep, but Derek can’t find it in him to be sorry. “Hello?” 

“Stiles,” Derek breathes in relief. “Hey, hi, oh my god.”

“Is everything okay?” He says without pause. “It’s four in the morning.” 

“I know, I know, I just –“ he stares out into his bedroom, the shadows, and the sound of the branch against the kitchen window screeching in the wind. “…I had a nightmare.”

Stiles is quiet for a moment. “Achilles killing you again?”

Derek hacks out a hysterical laugh, shaking his head quickly. “No, no, no. No. It was…I wouldn’t be calling you like this if it weren’t…”

“Okay,” Stiles says, voice soothing in his ear. 

“...I’m sorry if me telling you this brings back – bad thoughts,” he says evenly, and Stiles is quiet on the other line. “I – you – you had slit your wrist. In my dream.” 

There is a noise from the other side, a sigh and a long exhalation and a deep breath all at once. “That,” Stiles starts, “was a very long time ago.” 

“You always say that every time it comes up, that’s all you say, and I don’t think –“ 

“It’s my story to say what I want about,” Stiles defends, and Derek deflates, palming his face. “It was a long. Time ago. I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Derek agrees, voice cracking. “It was just…” 

“I know. And I think I know why you would dream something like that,” Stiles has on that voice he always uses whenever he’s about to be particularly insightful, and Derek prepares himself for it. “Listen. You could never be like him.”

Derek inhales, and then he squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s not about –“

“You’re not him,” Stiles repeats. “In spite of everything, you never came close. You just hurt me.” 

_Does that hurt_? And of course, it does. 

“Comforting,” Derek mutters, and then he frowns into his sheets. “Look, I’m sorry. I – I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, for calling you like this, for…not being who you wanted me to be. But I just think –“

“I’ve gotta go,” he says quickly, cutting Derek off before he can even get started. “And don’t call me. It just…makes it harder.” 

The line goes dead, and Derek sits there with the phone pressed to his ear for what feels like an eternity. Stiles had said nothing, not anything, and everything all at once. He does that. He’s like that. In everything they haven’t said to one another, there have been words all along. In a language that not even Stiles can read or write. Just silence, and everything they meant when they said nothing at all.

****

Derek opens up the door to his apartment, en route to his second day of classes for the winter semester, and finds an envelope sitting on his welcome mat. He stares at it for a second. It’s blank, no handwriting or words to give away who had put it there, but he knows intrinsically that it’s from Stiles. It couldn’t be from anyone else. 

He swallows, and considers for just one moment not picking it up. Just leaving it there, or letting someone else find it and be nosy and take it themselves, or maybe the wind will blow through the hallway one night and take it off and away. 

Bending down slowly, he takes the envelope in two hands, a frown on his face and a crease in his brow. It’s not closed or stuck shut, the black flap hanging open as Derek turns it over. He picks out two folded pieces of paper, and on the blank side, Stiles’ handwriting. 

_Go yourself or sell them – I can’t go_. 

The itinerary for Greece. Derek stares at the words for a long time, and then he flips the papers over and looks at the flight details. Los Angeles to Athens. He swallows again, and then he gently folds them back up and fits them back into the envelope. Maybe he should rip them apart in a blind rage or crumple them or something, anything, because doesn’t he deserve to be angry that Stiles is just throwing his gift away like it’s nothing to him? 

The issue is, it’s not nothing to Stiles. Stiles has an entire box of books under his bed about visiting Greece, all of them obsessively pored over and have been since he was sixteen years old, and he has posters of the Parthenon and the ruins of old theaters, and he daydreams more than anything else about standing there where thousands of years ago people watched his favorite plays be performed as they were intended to be. 

It speaks volumes, entire libraries, of how much Derek has hurt Stiles if he’s willing to give this up. The door to his apartment is still open and he hovers there for a long while. He considers cancelling the flight and getting as much of his money back as he can, but that leaves nothing but a bitter taste in his mouth. And the thought of going to Greece himself…he just can’t do that. Stiles would be everywhere, in every ruin, in every broken pillar. 

Derek is in love with him. And all of this is his fault. It’s true as Stiles had said that Derek has just been confused, and coming to terms with sexuality isn’t always like it is in television or movies, but Stiles waited. He waited until he couldn’t anymore. 

Stiles has all of those books, all of those tragedies, and he’ll sit alone in his bedroom, locked up with them, Derek knows. They all end terribly. Achilles dooms himself, twelve times over, in the shelves of Stiles’ bedroom, and that’s the only ending Stiles ever gets, no matter how many times he reads it.

Derek won’t be that, for him. That ending that never changes – he can’t do that to him.

****

His mother answers on the second ring, sounding cheery and excited to hear from him. He hadn’t called much last semester, as his sisters had pointed out to him, so any contact from him these days must be to her like a four leaf clover. 

“It’s late,” she says, “or at least where you are, it is.” 

“I wanted to call after dinner,” he explains, running his finger along the wooden top of the kitchen table. “Dad’s there, isn’t he?” 

“He is,” she confirms. 

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. “Have him pick up the other line, will you?” 

Derek’s parents still have landlines at their house, because they’re in a generation that thinks they still need those. As much as Derek has always found it useless, it’s never come in more handy than right now. She pauses on the other line, and then she asks, “is everything all right?” 

“Everything is fine,” he says evenly, in spite of the fact that he hasn’t been fine, not at all. “I just need to tell you guys something.” 

“All right,” she says slowly. He hears her muffled voice explaining to his father that Derek has something he wants to tell them, then his dad’s distant voice agreeing, before his mother’s voice is loud in his ear again. “What’s this about?” 

“Just hang on a minute,” Derek looks across his kitchen and has a bizarre urge to just spit it out to his mother here and there, before his father even gets a chance to pick up the phone upstairs in his office, and then hang up and be done with it. 

That’s not how Stiles would do it – in fact, that isn’t how he did it at all. He managed to do it face to face, after the worst night of his life. So Derek can do this. He sits there on the line and waits, until the mechanical sound of the phone being picked up scratches against his eardrum. “Hello?” 

“Hello,” his mom says back.

“What’s all this?” His dad demands, sounding put out. He usually is if you pester him after dinner when he’s trying to watch the games he DVR’d throughout the day while he was at work. 

“I wanted to tell you guys something.”

“As we have established,” his mom sounds anxious now, and that’s Derek’s fault. “You’re starting to worry me.” 

“It’s nothing bad,” he insists, and as he’s sitting up straighter in his chair, Erica comes into the kitchen. She sits down in the chair across from him, pulling her legs up to rest her mug of steaming tea on her knee, and watches him with a steady gaze. Derek clears his throat and meets her eyes, and she holds his eye contact steady. “It’s not bad. It’s good. It –“ he clears his throat again, shifting. Erica moves her free hand in the air in a sort of _aannddd_ …gesture, and Derek has to look away. “I’m – there’s someone I think I’m. In love with.” 

“Oh!” His mother sounds pleased. 

“With the classical studies major,” his dad clarifies, and Derek nods, even though he can’t see it. 

“Yes, yes, the classical studies major,” he looks out the window of their kitchen while Erica watches him, and the tree branch jostles in the wind, but doesn’t touch the glass. “They’re a classical studies major, and they’re brilliant. One of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And they’re – funny, and interesting and driven, and…” he takes a deep breath. “…and I’m in love with him.” 

There’s a long pause. Maybe they’re both waiting for him to backtrack and correct himself, but he doesn’t, and the silence goes on. Then, a throat clearing. “Him,” his mother’s voice. 

“Him,” Derek repeats, and Erica leans over the table and watches intently. “It’s – it’s a him. It’s a man.” 

Dead silence. Derek rubs his forehead and thinks that this moment is the longest of his entire life, like watching paint dry and getting a knife jabbed into his back and prying a nail out of his eye, all at once. There’s a short intake of breath, like one of them is going to speak, and then silence, again. 

“You know him,” Derek pushes, struggling to get his bearings in all this. “It’s – Stiles Stilinski. Sheriff Stilinski’s son? He’s –“

A slam and a click, and Derek is alarmed. It sounds like he’s just been hung up on. “Hello?” He tries, dread pooling in his gut.

“I’m here,” his mother says. She sounds solemn, contemplative. “Your father…” she trails off. She doesn’t need to finish that sentence. This isn’t the worst case scenario, not by a long shot, but it certainly isn’t going well either, and Erica frowns across from him and then turns away, giving Derek some modicum of privacy while still being there for him. 

“Mom,” Derek starts, and his voice is thin, and the screech of the branch against the window is loud, and Erica drinks her tea. “I love him. Okay? I _love_ him. And he loves me, he loves me so much –“

“Derek,” she starts, and Derek just talks right over her. 

“…and now he won’t speak to me because I was too much of a coward to tell you the truth. To tell anyone the truth. I won’t keep living like that,” he shakes his head at nothing, and nobody. “I can’t.” 

She sighs, long and loud. “You’re not gay,” she insists, and Derek raises his eyes to the ceiling. He had expected that response. After all, it’s only what he’s been telling himself for the past five months. 

“I’m bisexual.” 

“ _What_?” She sounds as though she’s never heard the word before in her entire life.

“Nevermind the label,” he moves his hands as if pushing it away, because face facts – he’d never be able to explain it to his mother, or his father, at least not just yet. “I just wanted you to know that. And you can never speak to me again if you want, but I’m going to go after him, and I might move in with him or… and that’s just – that’s just how it is.” 

She doesn’t say anything, not a word, not a breath, for a long time. Long enough that Derek thinks about hanging up and being done with the entire thing.

Then, she says, “I love you,” in a steady voice, and Derek covers his eyes with his free hand, breathing out shallowly into the top of the table. “I would love you no matter what. This is just…honey, it’s out of nowhere.” 

He bites his lip. “It’s been five months since it started.” 

“Well, you didn’t tell me,” she defends, sounding very put out about it. “I don’t know how to react. I don’t know what to say. I’m surprised, and so is your father but we – we love you.”

“Don’t speak for dad,” he hisses, because he can imagine his father is likely having some sort of mental breakdown about this entire thing even as they fucking speak. 

“I don’t need to conference with him to know it’s the truth,” she says back, voice firm, so Derek closes his mouth. “He loves you. No matter what. Just – that’s all I can think to say.” 

“Okay,” Derek decides, voice low. “Okay. That’s – okay.” 

She sighs. “And Stiles…Stiles is a nice boy.” 

Derek nearly laughs. He’s not really a nice boy – he’s a lot more than that. His mother might know of him, might have had run-ins with him in the past where they shook hands and Stiles smiled and talked about school and what he wanted to do with his life and how his father is doing, but she doesn’t know him. Not yet, anyway.

“This is why you got in that fight with Zack Peterson?” She clarifies, and Derek can’t really read her tone. It sounds a lot like she’s trying to make conversation out of fear of having to hang up. 

“Makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it,” he mutters, glancing out the window again before meeting Erica’s eyes across the table. She sits and listens, but says and does nothing – silent support. 

She makes a noise of agreement. “I just…I guess I’ll have to meet him?” 

“You have met him.”

“I meant meet him in a different way,” she clears her throat. “I meant – meet him as your – boyfriend.” The word comes out slowly, like she’s learning how to say it. 

Derek frowns, and he thinks about Stiles’ bedroom, where he must be right now, at this time of night. Alone, he is. “He’s not speaking to me right now. I told you that.” 

His mother tuts. “Well, fix it. I’d like to meet him. Your father, too.” 

“Mom,” Derek tries, but she cuts him off.

“I’ll speak to him. He’s not angry. He’s just surprised. You know how he is with surprises.” Boy, does Derek ever. They tried to throw him a surprise party when Derek and Laura were still in high school, and he called the police on the entire shenanigan because he thought he saw prowlers lurking around inside his own dark house. “I’ll talk to him, and it’ll be – it’ll be fine.” 

After so many months of building it up in his head as being one of the worst possible fucking things that could happen, Derek can’t imagine how it’ll ever be fine, but his mother just sounds so sure. It’s all he can do to croak an affirmative right back at her. 

“All I’ve ever cared about is that you’re happy. Maybe this isn’t how I thought your life would wind up,” she laughs just slightly, “but Stiles – he’s a nice boy.” She says the same thing from before, likely because she doesn’t even know how else to describe him. “And he…he loves you?” 

Derek looks out the window, feels Erica’s eyes on the side of his face. 

“He does.”

****

“Are you going to tell him?” 

Derek looks up from his book on the couch, and finds Erica standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She raises her eyebrows as soon as they make eye contact, and then Derek is pointedly hiding his face in his book again, frowning and furrowing his brow. “Tell who what?” 

“Tell Stiles that you told your parents you’re bi.” 

“That word just came out of my mouth,” he mutters into the pages he’s not even reading anymore, just staring at intently to get himself out of this conversation. “I don’t know what I am.” 

Footsteps pad across the floor and then she’s plopping down onto the couch right next to him. His book jostles in his hands from the force of her body landing on the pillows, but he haughtily rights it back up and stares even harder at it. “Are you going to tell him?” 

Derek flips a page he never even read the first sentence of. “Pretty hard to talk to a person who won’t talk to me.” 

She blinks up at the ceiling, Derek can see that from the corner of his eyes, and then she lowers her head again and looks at her hands. “He’d want to know no matter how mad he is at you,” she insists. “He’d want to know that.” 

Derek turns another page of his book, and Erica sighs.

**

_Stiles, I’m sorry for everything that happened and I really want to talk to you, I think we could –  
Stiles, here’s your book back. I’m sorry about all that shit that happened and –  
Stiles, I know I said it wasn’t my fault, but it was. I had the wrong ideas –  
Stiles, here’s your book back._

Derek stares at all the crumpled up post-its on his desk, right next to Stiles’ old weathered copy of The Iliad, and turns his pen around and around in his fingers. He’ll never get the words right. He had planned on shoving a note inside of the book, leaving it in his mailbox, and hoping Stiles would call him. It felt like the right thing to do – let Stiles know that he’s open to a conversation, but not try to actively force one that Stiles doesn’t want. 

But now that he’s sitting here with his pen and his paper, he feels like a coward all over again. He’s trying to not do that anymore, but it’s easy to fall back into old habits.

He throws all his half-finished notes away into the trash, and then he sits there in his room, and thinks about Stiles in his own room not that far from him. Derek has been there before – last time he was there, he didn’t think it would be the last. That’s how it goes, sometimes.

**

They run into each other at the fountain. Stiles is sitting in his usual spot, and when Derek first notices him, he’s stretching his arms above his head and then cracking his fingers, as if he’s just spent a lot of time sitting writing another one of those mythic papers of his for yet another class. For all Derek knows, he’s working on his thesis, now. He had mentioned it when they were still together. 

Derek is initially stuck frozen at seeing him in person for the first time since that night at Lydia’s place. He looks different now than he did during that argument. There he looked in rare form, with dark circles under his eyes, a frown deep in his face, lit up only by the distant streams from lights far away from where they were standing. 

Here he’s in bright lighting, and he still looks exhausted and a little out of sorts, but almost the same as Derek remembers him. He clicks his pen a few times and frowns intensely at his computer screen, and Derek recognizes that as the face he makes when he can’t figure out what he’s trying to write. 

Derek moves into line and puts his hands in his pockets just for something to do with them, staring dead ahead for as long as he can stand it. It doesn’t last very long. Before he can control it, his eyes are wandering back over to where Stiles is sitting. There’s another second of Stiles clicking his pen and furrowing his brow, and then his eyes shift just slightly, and he catches sight of Derek standing there.

Derek didn’t know what he had been expecting. There had been a lot of scenarios that played out in Derek’s mind of running into Stiles again, what would happen, what Stiles would do, where they would be, what Stiles would say, how he’d look, and on and on. He never settled on the most likely turn out – but he had been expecting _something_ to happen. Anything.

Stiles stares at him for a second, expression unreadable, and then his eyes slowly move back to his screen. No word, no reaction, no nothing. 

Like they don’t even fucking know each other. 

Maybe Derek deserves nothing more and nothing less, but he stands there and feels like he’s crawling out of his skin as the line shuffles forward. He never thought of Stiles as the type of person who could be truly cold, but then what else did Derek expect? When you do to someone what Derek did to Stiles, the reserve of warmth that a person has must run completely dry, freeze up, go arctic. The cold shoulder is _nothing_ compared to what Derek deserves. 

Lydia is tapping her fingers on the counter when the person before Derek clears away from the register to wait for their own drink, like she saw him come in and has been waiting for him this entire time. She purses her lips as he approaches, looks him up and down, and raises her chin into the air. “You’re not scared I’ll spit into your drink?” 

Derek turns around and looks at where Stiles is sitting, and then turns face forward to Lydia. Of course she’d know all about what happened between them, now. Stiles has his friends and Lydia is one of them, and he’s never been much for being a closed book. “I think you need this job too much to risk getting fired over something so petty,” he counters, and she frowns. 

She fishes a sixteen ounce cup off its stack, clears her throat, and puts on a very professional tone of voice. “Triple Americano with four pumps of almond and steamed almond milk?” 

“Yes,” he agrees, and she slides the cup over to the girl running the espresso machine for the day. Lydia’s fingers work over the screen, and then she rattles off his total in a detached tone of voice. Derek hands her a five and tells her to keep the change, which she scoffs at haughtily as if she’s offended by the one dollar and fifty cent tip he’s been leaving with her for three fucking years, and Derek figures it’s officially a lost cause with her. 

Not that they ever would have been best friends, but Derek was never the type for burning bridges. Now, apparently, he’s lost a decent friend in Scott, and a decent coffee experience in Lydia, and his father won’t speak to him, and Erica feels sorry for him, and Stiles won’t even fucking look at him. 

Derek hovers in the corner waiting for his drink, pointedly not looking at Stiles if he can help it, and he thinks that he’ll never come back here again. He can’t. It’s pathetic to run and hide like he’s been doing, but he doesn’t know what else he’s meant to do. 

He gets his drink and decides he won’t be sticking around like he had planned to – he can do his work in one of the shitty little cubbies in the fountain room up on the third floor, where it’s dead quiet and he can barely hear himself think over the silence. He walks past Stiles as he goes, and Stiles looks up with that same detached expression on, and Derek can’t stand it. 

Derek walks right out of there, clutching his drink and frowning down at his feet. He makes it about ten feet out of the fountain, close to the center of the first floor of the library where other people are teeming past him in rushes to get to class or to get to their favorite spot to study. He pauses there, and glances over his shoulder to the window where he can see Stiles through the glass, tapping away on his laptop. 

He turns around and charges back into the fountain, not letting himself stop to think about it. If he thinks about it, then he won’t do it. Stiles is of course still sitting there when Derek rounds the corner, and when he walks with determined steps in his direction, Stiles looks up, a befuddled and slightly upset expression on his face this time. 

Stiles opens his mouth like he’s going to say something since he can tell Derek is headed straight for him and with intent at that, but Derek talks over him before he gets the chance. “I need to talk to you,” he half yells, loud enough that Lydia looks over at them from her spot behind the counter, narrowing her eyes. 

Stiles looks at him, lips parted, and then sets his jaw tight and looks back down at his screen. He starts typing again, likely nonsense words just to make it look like he’s busy. “I’m working on something,” he says, not too unkindly. Just matter-of-fact. 

“Five minutes,” Derek insists, and Stiles glares harder at his keyboard. “Please.” 

Stiles stops typing, moving his eyes to look up into Derek’s. They stare at one another for what feels like a while, and Derek is almost paralyzed underneath Stiles’ steady gaze. He’s always had that way of looking at people – like he can see clean through to their center, the core of them. Like he already knows everything Derek is about to say, and he doesn’t want to hear any of it. 

But, in spite of that, Stiles huffs out a breath and stands from his spot. “Five minutes,” he spits in a no-nonsense tone of voice, and stalks off toward the bathroom in the corner of the room. Lydia’s eyes watch them as they go, but Derek keeps his own firmly planted on the back of Stiles’ neck at he walks with determined steps. He knows what it feels like to run his fingers through the short hairs at the base of his neck, what it’s like to kiss him right there and feel Stiles shiver underneath him, how Stiles will laugh and pull away if Derek touches him behind his ears. 

Stiles leans back against the sink with his arms crossed as soon as they’re alone in the bathroom, and he meets Derek’s eyes with his lips pursed. He moves his shoulders like _so?_ , and Derek clears his throat. He looks at his own reflection in the mirror behind Stiles’ head, and then quickly has to look away from his own eyes. 

“You sold those tickets yet?” Stiles asks, voice hard and cold, and Derek palms his forehead. “Or are you going to go yourself? You want to borrow my books?” 

“Don’t,” Derek says, holding one hand out. “Don’t be like this – don’t try to bait me into an argument just to – just to be like that.” 

Stiles looks away, jaw line hard, but he stays quiet. The truth is, Derek can’t sell the tickets, and he can’t go himself, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do about that if Stiles stays mad at him. He’s tried not to think about it, honestly. “What did you want to say to me? What could there possibly be left to say? I told you – I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” 

“I can’t –“

“I can’t speak to you. I’ve told you that, I’ve been telling you that,” Stiles shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling, like he’s trying to keep himself from crying. “You don’t listen.”

Derek opens his mouth and tries to say it – he tries to tell Stiles that he’s told his parents, and his sisters likely know by now, and that’s it. That’s the worst part of it, and it’s over, and maybe Stiles couldn’t rely on or trust Derek before but everything is different now. But for some reason the words get caught just from looking at Stiles in person, just from seeing how hurt and upset he is, how he can barely meet Derek’s eyes without having to immediately look away and bite his bottom lip to keep it from wobbling. 

So, he says the first thing that comes to mind instead. The truth, if not exactly the one he should be saying. “I miss you,” he says, taking a step forward, and Stiles shakes his head again. “I miss you like fucking crazy –“

“Derek.” And just the fact that Stiles is using his real name, and not the nickname he insists upon using that Derek has grown fond of, makes Derek want to pull his hair out. 

“…you’re all I think about, I just want to be close to you,” he reaches out and tries to grab at Stiles’ hand, but Stiles recoils as if he’s been burned, jerking back and away and immediately crossing his arms over his chest again. 

“Stop it,” he hisses, and Derek closes his mouth. “Nothing’s fucking changed with you, not a single thing!” 

“I’m –“

“You still have to hide in bathrooms to even speak to me,” Stiles gestures around themselves to their enclosed space, and Derek palms his forehead again. “You still have to make sure the door is closed before you even touch my fucking hand. I – I’m _done_.” 

He moves to walk out the door, and Derek can’t help himself. He throws his arm out so his hand is on the door jamb, so when Stiles tries to pull it open the door stops against his forearm, and Stiles gives him a dark look. “You miss me,” Derek insists, trying to meet Stiles’ eyes to no avail. “You fucking miss me, I know you do.” 

“Would that make you happy? To hear how miserable I’ve been?” 

Derek looks at him. “None of this makes me _fucking_ happy.” 

“Get out of my way,” Stiles says evenly, and Derek pulls his arm away slowly. It’s not like he has any other choices. He could keep Stiles in here all day, and it wouldn’t make a difference. If Derek can’t be honest with him even now, even in the face of all of this, then what’s the use? Stiles has done nothing since day one but be upfront, because he lived his whole adolescence hiding and being afraid, and he won’t do it again. It’s what Stiles deserves to have someone be that open and honest for him, but Derek…it’s not that easy to change. He can’t just snap his fingers and become someone else, just like that. 

Like Achilles had said, in a passage underlined and highlighted and starred in Stiles’ copies of the Iliad, there can be no covenants between men and lions. And Derek is just a man, and Stiles suffered so much to come out the other side a lion, and he can’t revert back to being anything but. 

Stiles pulls the door open, finally, and then he hovers there for a second, door wide open, so the entire café sees Derek and Stiles staring at each other. He says, “It’s a shame how much I love you, how you fucking waste it.” 

And then he walks out, shoulders bunched up as he goes, and Derek stares after him even as the door slowly swings shut.

****

“You know, your father – he’s not angry. He’s really not angry. You just dump this on us, and you’re all the way across the country, and I don’t know how else you expected us to react. I support you a hundred percent, and given time, your father will too. You can’t expect these things to just happen. We’re – well. I’d just like to have Stiles over for dinner. I’m sure if your father really met him and spoke to him, he’d see what you see. Just…give it a minute. Call me back, for once.” 

Derek deletes the voicemail after listening to it for a third time, and then he looks up at the ceiling in his bedroom. He’s not doing any of this right. He had to wait until he was miles away to tell his parents the truth, and he couldn’t even tell his sisters, and he had an opportunity to tell Stiles all about this, and Stiles would have been happy to hear it at the bare minimum, but he just couldn’t do it. 

He keeps choosing the easy way out, and all it’s doing is fucking him over, again and again. 

Erica knocks on his bedroom door and pokes her head in, looking dressed up and pretty like she’s about to go out. She slides inside when she sees Derek is just lazing on his bed looking pathetic, in a sea of unwashed clothes and open textbooks and empty water bottles, and then puts her hands on her hips as she appraises him. “It’s Friday night,” she announces, and Derek nods his head. He knows. “And you’re sitting in here like the cryptkeeper.” 

“The crypt keeper at least had some dignity,” Derek mutters, looking back up at his ceiling light. He squints against it, frowning. 

“I guess so,” Erica agrees. “You look ridiculous. I can’t stand by and let this continue.” 

“I’m sad,” Derek tells her, and she huffs. “That gives me a pass to be pathetic.” 

“Everyone’s broken up with someone before, you know! People move on, they get on with their lives!” 

“Not everyone’s broken up with _Stiles_ before,” he hisses dismally. 

Erica sighs long and loud, like she just can’t deal with it anymore, and likely, she can’t. “You’re doing this to yourself, at this point. You won’t tell him the truth and he thinks you still can’t even tell your own mother that you’re seeing him.” 

“He’s not so easy to talk to!” Derek bursts out, sitting up all the way to address her directly. “You don’t know what it’s like to have him angry at you. I don’t know. I get in a room with him and it’s like – I can’t. He’s just. He’s.” 

“You know, you’re overthinking this entire thing,” she adjusts her sparkling dress, which is the exact moment Derek even notices she’s wearing a sparkling dress, “blah blah, you’re in love with him, blah blah, he’s amazing, blah blah, he’s so smart, blah blah, I can’t talk to him, blah blah –“

“I get the point.” 

“I don’t know if you do,” Erica raises a single eyebrow. “You think you’re just some pathetic little dog chasing him around, and he could do without you so easily. When you know he says the exact same shit about you.” 

Derek blinks at her. “What?” 

She looks exasperated, throwing her hands in to the air. “That whole spiel about how amazing and smart and obsessed you are with him? He says. The same. Shit. About you. Because he’s in love with you, and you’re a fucking idiot. Yet you have the gall to act like you’re the kicked puppy. Whatever,” she waves her hand in the air dismissively, like none of it matters and Derek is too stupid to listen to it either way. “I’m going to a party, because at least Scott and Stiles are still speaking to one of us. You can just – stay in here like Count Dumpula and be dumb.” 

She stomps out of the room in her boots, closing the door behind her with a hard slam, and leaves Derek blinking after her. He hears the front door open and close distantly and muffled, and then he looks back up at his ceiling and blinks some more. Apparently Erica is going over to a party at Scott and Stiles’ apartment – which means there’s a party there tonight. Of course there is; the two of them like to throw parties for occasions like “day that ends in y”, so of course. That’s not really the interesting part.

Derek sits up in his bed and puts his hands on either side of himself, as though he’s about to push himself off the mattress and get up and put some clothes on, but he pauses. He takes in a big breath through his nose, and catches sight of Stiles’ copy of the Iliad sitting on his desk, still surrounded by the half-written notes that Derek had composed. 

He hasn’t been doing any of this the good way. He just never could get it quite right. What Stiles had said to him at the fountain was true – that Derek has wasted everything, them, and time, and energy, and everything that they had. 

Standing up from his bed, he picks up the Iliad and holds it in his hands. He looks down at all the notes, the drafts, the cowardice, and frowns.

Men and lions, he thinks.

**

Instead of knocking, Derek opens the door to Scott and Stiles’ apartment and finds the party in full swing. The usual suspects seem to be there, all the English and literature majors that Derek only ever sees in short glimpses on campus and in Stiles’ living room, and none of them pay him any mind as he steps inside. Likely, none of them, even some of Stiles’ closest friends, don’t even know who he fucking is. Or, at least, don’t know the specifics. The details. And there are thousands of them, the same ones that Derek plays over and over again in his mind at night, all by himself. 

He closes the door behind himself and scans the perimeter of the room, finding nothing but alcohol and bowls of chips and Clytemnestra being tossed back and forth for his troubles. Allison is there, leaning up against the wall next to the bookshelf and watching the statue fly through the air like Wimbledon, a wry smile on her face, and Derek quickly dodges out of her eyesight before he gets an earful from her. God only knows what she would have to say to him in light of everything. 

There doesn’t appear to be much to see in the main room, so he’s about to duck into the kitchen to see if he can’t find Stiles in there – which is likely. Stiles likes to set up camp on his kitchen counter, dangling his long legs off the edge and drinking and smoking until he stumbles down onto his feet and comes to a shocking realization of just how drunk he is. 

He frowns across the living room one last time and moves to bridge the gap between himself and the kitchen table through the open doorway, but then he spots Stiles emerging like a phantom from the darkened hallway leading to he and Scott’s bedrooms. He steps into the living room with his hands on his hips, and Derek takes in the entire picture.

Stiles has got on sweatpants and his dorky 90’s style t-shirt with a shittily ironed on image of the Parthenon glued to the front, his glasses on his face, his hair a mess, and he doesn’t have any alcohol in his hands. For Christ’s sake, he doesn’t even look like he’s had anything to drink – he looks annoyingly sober compared to everyone else, and also looks annoyed to _be_ sober if the intense frown he’s sporting is anything to go by. 

There’s a party at his apartment that he seems to not want to be a part of at all – either because he has homework to do or because he just didn’t feel like it, but either way it doesn’t matter. He’s standing there, and he starts yelling at the top of his lungs about turning the music down and clearing out if you weren’t actually invited because some people have work to do, and the entire crowd sort of quiets and shifts, laughing and tittering to themselves. 

“…actually didn’t even want to have a party, but I was promised, rather incorrectly, that it was going to be a small affair of twenty people,” Stiles goes on as the crowd gets even quieter, so Derek can hear everything he says crystal clear. “This is not twenty people. This is the entire graduating class. If you don’t belong here, get out.” 

A few people actually do stream out the door, taking their drinks and chips with them. They don’t even seem that upset about it, but then again, there’s always another party somewhere else, even if it’s in someone’s shitty basement at their mom’s house. 

“And turn down the god damn music!” Stiles throws his hands in the air, and a girl Derek vaguely recognizes from campus fumbles over to the stereo and quickly turns the volume down to a reasonable level, while Stiles watches her like a hawk with a frown. “ _Thank_ you. For God’s sake. Respect a man’s house, will you? I don’t even know why I…” he trails off, eyes scanning over the crowd, and then he lands on Derek. 

Enough people have cleared out or darted away to hide in the kitchen that Derek is in plain and open sight, too tall and broad to be hidden behind the girl standing in front of him eating bugles off the tips of her fingers. Stiles looks at him, his sentence cutting off right in the middle, and Derek squares his shoulders. 

Now that he’s been seen, he only has a second to make his case. Stiles should by all rights be throwing him out the door even as they speak, but he stays still for long enough that Derek can move in front of people where they stand and linger, pushing through until he comes out into the opening where Stiles is standing in front of the hallway, hands still on his hips. 

No bullshit, Derek thinks, as Stiles takes in the whole sight of him – from his clothes to the copy of the Iliad in his hand. No more beating around the bush, and no more burying things, and no more telling half the truth. Not anymore. 

Derek comes to a stop right in front of him, and holds the Iliad loosely in his fingers at his side. He meets Stiles’ eyes head on, met with a slightly baffled expression. He must be mystified that Derek would ever have the fucking balls to show his face around Scott and Stiles’ actual home, considering what happened last time he got within ten feet of Scott, but here he is, and Stiles is silent and still. 

Derek looks at his hair, at the way his eyes look just a little bit bigger behind the frames of his glasses, the barest peak of the kraken from under the collar of his shirt. He swallows. “I told my parents,” he starts with, and Stiles just looks at him. “I called my mom and my dad and I told them I was – I told them I was with you. And I didn’t call you Stacy.” 

Stiles’ eyes shift just a bit to Derek’s right, and then to his left. The rest of the room has gone eerily quiet, save for the low hum of music still drifting out of the speakers and the handful of people in the kitchen playing beer pong across the table. Everyone is listening, and watching, and Stiles meets Derek’s eyes again. 

“I told them I was dating Stiles Stilinski and I was in love with him. Dad – hung up. And he won’t talk to me. And I get these voicemails from my mother. But I don’t…” he gestures his free hand out, and Stiles tracks it with his eyes, still silent. “…I don’t care. I don’t care. I mean I care, but not like – not like I did. Before. And I know before I wasn’t…I know I really let you down, and I’m sorry. I never meant to…yeah.” 

There’s more quiet, Stiles staring at him, the rest of the party either politely pretending to be looking at something else or brazenly watching the entire thing with half unhinged jaws – Scott in the doorway of the kitchen leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Music still playing. Seconds passing. 

“I would give anything to be with you. I’m sorry I held back before, but you know what that’s like,” Derek says with finality, and then he holds the Iliad out to Stiles, pressing it into his chest. “And this is yours.” 

Slowly, almost like he isn’t sure what his hands are meant to do anymore, Stiles takes the book between his fingers. Derek releases his own hold from it, and it stays upright in Stiles’ hands, while Stiles just looks down at the cover. On the inside is a signature of Stiles’ name that he had put there when he was sixteen, a completely different person from the one standing in front of Derek right now. A scared person. A kid who would’ve rather died than tell his father the truth. 

Stiles finally looks into his eyes. He reaches up with one finger and pushes his glasses out of his face up into his hair, as though Derek is far enough away to be a tad blurry, and Stiles wants to see the entire picture for himself. “Did you finish it?” 

Derek shuffles his feet. “No,” he admits, and Stiles almost smiles. 

“How could you not finish The Iliad?” 

With a bit of a wry smile, Derek shrugs. “The ending sucks,” he offers. 

Stiles laughs, incredulous and slightly hysterical, nose scrunching up as he does so – and Derek nearly can’t help himself. He leans in, taking Stiles by his chin, and kisses him. It’s not that intense of a kiss, and Derek can feel Stiles’ body sort of locking up underneath his own. He starts to pull back, reading Stiles’ body language as a big fat _no_ , but then Stiles drops his book down at their feet. It splatters to the ground, all its pages flopping for a moment before it lands right on top of Derek’s foot, wide open and spilling its guts. Then, Stiles is grabbing Derek with both hands, pulling him in closer against himself, and kissing him right back. 

Stiles tastes like coffee and smoke and smells like potato chips and his body wash and the ink from pens and books – all meshed up together to provide Derek with a sensory memory of being in his bedroom, alone with him. It’s just like being there, in spite of the fact that two dozen pairs of eyes are staring at them, and staring, but Derek almost can’t feel their eyes. It should be hard to be this forward with himself and with other people and with Stiles, but it – isn’t. Stiles pulls him closer, and Derek goes, and they kiss, until Stiles pulls away and presses his forehead against Derek’s. 

His breath fans across Derek’s face, panting and shallow, and he wraps his arm around Derek’s neck. “You just kissed me in front of all my friends,” Stiles murmurs to him, like Derek doesn’t know. 

“I did,” he agrees. Stiles smiles and huffs a laugh, burying his face to hide in Derek’s neck, squeezing him tighter. “I’m sorry it took me so long.” 

“Not that long,” Stiles mutters, and around them people start to go back to their conversations, whether about Stiles and Derek or not Derek couldn’t care less. “The Iliad is 358,000 words, you know.” 

“You think it’s been shorter than that?” 

Stiles pulls back to look Derek in the eyes, scratching his fingers into the hairs at the base of Derek’s neck. He smiles, all teeth and eyes crinkling at the corners, tilting his head to the side, heedless to anyone else around them. “We’re not done yet, either way.” 

No, they certainly aren’t. 

They stand there in Stiles’ apartment for another moment longer, while the party gets louder and the music gets turned up again, and Derek thinks that in spite of everything else, there’s no place else he would rather be than here. 

Here, there is a bedroom down the hall where Stiles has grown up in a town far away from the one that nearly killed him. There is a spot in Derek’s kitchen two blocks down on the floor where beer had spilled across the linoleum and left a stain that Derek can’t lift no matter what he does, and there is a room where Derek and Stiles stayed up all night talking to each other, and a pantry across town where Stiles said Derek’s name for the first time – and these are all places and things and nights where Stiles and Derek have loved each other. It’s not 358,000 words, but it’s not on a page. 

And then it’s funny, when Derek thinks about how it all began.


	9. for the first time in recorded history

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is the epilogue, closure on certain things, allusions to the future, etc etc

“Okaaayy,” Stiles says, sifting through the deck of flashcards in his hands. He comes up with one he raises his eyebrows at, and then he shows the front of it to Derek, pressing it up close to the side of his face while Derek tries to keep his eyes on the road. “This one.”

Derek glances at it quickly before turning his eyes back to driving, frowning at the mish mash of Greek lettering on the card. “Um – help.” 

Stiles snaps his fingers and smiles. “Right,” he says, and then waves it around in his face some more. “Now say it in Greek.” 

Derek huffs a sigh, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. He makes a valiant attempt at the pronunciation like Stiles had tried to teach him – reading the still unfamiliar characters of the language like he’s trying to solve a math problem. Stiles stares at him for just a second after it’s done, and then he shrugs his shoulders. 

“Good enough,” he decides, and flips to another. “Here, this one.” 

Derek glances at it, and frowns again. “Hospital.” 

“Now, in Greek.” 

“Stiles,” Derek slows to a stop at a red light, and Stiles raises his eyebrows at him. “You’ve chosen the single most intimidating and scary set of Greek words to teach me, and none of them are getting me very hyped up about the trip. I’m _nervous_.”

“These are the words,” Stiles waves the index cards around, handmade by him some two months ago and already worn down from how often he totes them around and makes Derek study them, “that you need to know in a foreign county. I worry.”

“You know how to speak Greek. I don’t need to,” Derek shrugs, and Stiles gives him a pursed lip glare. 

“We might get separated, or something bad might happen,” Stiles smacks the side of Derek’s head with the stack of cards and Derek flinches, hitting on the gas and clearing through the intersection. 

“Why don’t you just put me in a shirt that says _if found, return to Stiles_ in Greek?” 

“Not a bad idea,” Stiles taps his chin, giving Derek that sly smile of his, before he throws another card into Derek’s face. “This is the most important one,” he thwaps it into Derek’s nose once or twice, heedless to the fact that Derek is literally operating a motor vehicle at the moment. 

Derek glares, but recites the Greek for _does anyone nearby speak English_? for the ten thousandth time, mostly just for Stiles’ own peace of mind. One thing Derek has learned about Stiles is that he can be a bit of a worry wart and, even more bizarrely, somewhat of a mother hen. It must have something to do with the fact that after his mother died and his dad started drinking, he had to grow up twice as fast as the other kids around him and now has a natural proclivity for haranguing people in the name of their own well being. 

Derek will never get the hang of Greek. He pronounces everything awkwardly and all chopped up and the locals will hate him and call him a filthy American, while they’ll all fawn and coo over Stiles – Derek has accepted it. Stiles, apparently, has not. 

“You’ll thank me for this one day,” Stiles says, smacking his rubber band tight against his cards after he’s forced Derek to go through the entire stack. He shoves them into the glove compartment of Derek’s car and then turns and looks out the window, squinting into the summer sun with a grimace. “This town is so ugly.”

They’re just driving past Beacon Hills’ one and only nail salon, the sign for it all weathered and faded like an old Barbie doll’s lipstick, and Stiles looks at it like it’s personally offended him. Since coming home for Summer after graduating, Derek has spent a solid week palling around with Stiles around their shared hometown, and it’s been one of the weirdest weeks of Derek’s entire life – that there are certain places and things that Derek thought existed only his own memory, but that Stiles remembers as well. It makes him feel closer to Stiles, if he’s being honest.

But Stiles looks at the town as a whole like something that’s come sprinting out of his own personal circle of hell. He doesn’t have very many happy memories to relay, while Derek points at landmarks or restaurants and tells old stories and Stiles smiles and laughs and asks questions – but he never once tells a story of his own from back home.

Derek wonders how many good stories he even has from his childhood, period.

“It sure is,” Derek agrees. 

“It’s like an oozing bulge,” he lifts a brow and then runs his hand through his hair, thumping his head back onto the seat and staring at the ceiling of Derek’s car. “I hate that I’m broke and can’t afford to live somewhere else right now. And you’re the idiot who _can_ afford to live somewhere else, but came back here all the same.” 

Derek takes a turn onto Main Street, which stretches out and on toward the scenic mountains off in the distance. “You’re here,” Derek reminds him, and Stiles smiles.

“I hate when you say dumb stuff like that,” he makes a face like he doesn’t hate it at all, staring down at his knee as he fiddles with the fabric of his jeans. “But I just – I wish we were still in New York.” 

Derek watches as the sunshine flits across Stiles’ eyes, tree branches casting shadows into his irises while he frowns out at his hometown, and he doesn’t know what to say. In New York they met each other and went through a lot together, but Stiles doesn’t seem to think about any of that the way he thinks about what happened to him here. Derek doesn’t know if they’ll ever go back again, and he misses Stiles’ bedroom in his apartment, but what’s past is past. 

It just seems as though Beacon Hills never really got the memo, on that front. 

They go to a newer coffee place that opened up sometime while they were off at college, and Stiles has to actually rattle off his entire specific coffee order slowly and very specifically, while the high school girl sort of makes big eyes at him and writes it as quick as she can. When Stiles gets his drink he takes a sip, frowns, and says, “I miss Lydia.” 

“I don’t,” Derek says back – and really, he doesn’t. She was good at making coffee, but aside from that she was just one of those people he knew in college and will likely never see again. It’s weird to think about. 

They sit down in the comfy couch off to the side, hidden underneath a giant painting of a mountain, and Stiles grimaces at it and then taps his leg up and down, staring out across the room with a sort of detached hostility. “So,” Stiles starts, playing with the sleeve on his cup, “what are you – you know. Doing.”

“Drinking coffee with you,” Derek answers, and Stiles smiles at him, moving just marginally closer to him on the couch. 

“I meant with your life.” 

“Oh, the big d word.” 

Stiles makes a face. “Yeah, _that_ big d.” 

“Well,” Derek thinks about it for a moment. Every single senior in college spends a lot of time figuring out what the hell they’re going to be doing when they graduate, and Derek was surrounded by people who had applied and gotten into grad school, or people who were going to Portland and never coming back, or people who were going to really do something with themselves – while Derek was one of the ones who simply never knew. 

He still doesn’t know. 

“I figure we’ll go to Greece,” he starts, and Stiles nods. “And then – after that – I’ll just…work. Take an internship maybe. There’s a couple I’ve looked into that could be, you know.” 

Stiles taps his fingers on the lip of his cup and sits up straighter, but doesn’t look Derek right in the eyes. “I looked at a couple in Philadelphia for you,” he offers, and Derek turns to face him head on, confused. 

“Why Philadelphia specifically?”

Stiles sips, as if giving him time to formulate an answer. “So, okay, I wasn’t hiding this from you,” he begins, and Derek turns more so he can lean in front of Stiles, meet his eyes even though Stiles keeps trying to duck it, a bashful blush high on his face. “I just – I wanted to…I didn’t want you to, like, base your entire decision on me or anything, and wanted you to spend some time thinking for yourself before I…said anything.” 

Derek blinks at him. “Said anything about what?” 

With a palm on the side of his face, like he still can’t believe he can actually say this, Stiles sort of laughs. “I – I got offered a teaching job in Philadelphia.” 

“ _What_?” Derek puts his drink down on the table in front of them, a slow grin spreading across his face. Stiles nods, laughing some more. “That’s so great, holy shit, Stiles.” 

“I know,” he agrees, trying to cover up his smile with his fingers – but Derek grabs onto his wrist and pulls it away from his face. “It’s – the pay is pennies which I expected, and it’s at a public school in a sort of shady neighborhood but it’s – Philadelphia. And they basically begged me to come, can you believe that? Me.” 

“I absolutely can believe that,” Derek says. 

“It’s AP literature,” he sits up straighter, closer into Derek’s personal space. “That’s the class they want me to teach.”

“And you’re so young and baby faced,” Derek reaches out and strokes under Stiles’ chin, which makes Stiles laugh and pull away, “they’ll love you over there, I bet.” 

“I’m so likeable. Until I assign the homework,” he grins. “But I – I’m going to take it.” 

“Of course you are,” Derek says, no-nonsense in his tone. 

“And I’m going to move to Philadelphia in August.” He pauses, picking his drink up again and sipping very slow and deliberately. “…you. You haven’t figured out what you’re doing yet. I just thought…you could come.” 

Derek looks at him, and Stiles meets his gaze back steadily. 

“You’ve got all that money that you said you were going to use to get your footing after school anyway, and I know you don’t want to stay here, but – you could go anywhere. And Philly is – cool. I think. I’ve never been. I mean it’s not New York City or anything but it’s far away from here and you know…I mean, it’s not like we’ll be living it up, or anything. I’ll be making enough for rent and gas and food, for the first couple of years, but it’s just my first job and –“ 

“Stiles,” Derek stops him before he works himself up, which he’s already half done anyway, and puts his hand on Stiles’ thigh. He meets his eyes again, and smiles, and Stiles nervously smiles back. “I’ll come with you.” 

“You don’t have to,” Stiles says quickly, shaking his head. “I just – I realize I’m pressuring you, and I didn’t want to do that –“

“You’re not. Like you said, I’ve made no plans,” he shrugs. “I’m happy to follow you, anywhere.” 

Stiles looks at him and makes a face like he can’t decide where to go from here. He looks down at his hands, across the shop, at the table, at Derek’s shirt, at anything – and then he smiles down into his lap. “And Philly is cool,” he repeats, to which Derek nods. “Did you know I’m crazy in love with you?” 

Derek leans forward and kisses him on the lips, gently, before pulling back but keeping his face close enough so that when he lowers his eyes, his lashes brush against Stiles’ cheek. “I have figured that out myself.” 

“We are going to have so much fun in Philadelphia,” Stiles tells him, and Derek nods. “Cheese steaks, and the Liberty Bell I think, and – other stuff.”

“American History, not your forte?” 

“Who cares, I always say,” Stiles shrugs. “From the Dark Ages on it can suck my ass.” 

“The fall of Rome,” Derek reminds him, and Stiles nods.

“The fall of any civilization worth mentioning,” he leans back into the couch and smiles, sipping at his coffee and looking incredibly pleased. “I haven’t started looking at places, but I guess we can – we can do that together.” 

“Sure.”

“Greece first,” he picks up Derek’s hand and plays with his fingers, squeezing and unsqueezing, toying with them in his lap. “You make me so happy.”

“You’re feeling particularly sappy today, I see,” Derek tells him, and Stiles blushes and shrugs some more, but makes no commentary on it either way. Derek can really imagine them together in a new city, finding cool restaurants together and staying up late grading tests and proof reading papers and drinking coffee and just – being together. Derek can’t think of anything he truly wants more than that. 

They sit and chatter for a while about the specifics, how Stiles was planning on getting there, how he thinks he should work and save up for a car that will actually survive the winter this time, the internships Stiles had mentioned before that actually sound interesting and on the nose. Stiles is just mentioning how he wants to get a new tattoo, but now that he’s going to be among the children he should be more careful about where he puts it, when he looks across the shop and abruptly stops talking, mouth closing so hard his teeth click. 

Derek blinks. “What?” He asks, trying to following Stiles’ eye line. 

There, across the room in perfect flying colors, is Zack Peterson. Derek had actually not given much of a second thought to whether he or Stiles or them together would wind up running into him, because it’s something that Derek tends to put on the backburner of his mind at all times and doesn’t linger on much. Especially considering Stiles’ constant reluctance to even mention it or speak about it – but there he is. He’s standing at the counter paying with a twenty dollar bill, and then he adjusts his hat on his head, flipping it around so it’s backwards like he’s sixteen years old again, and Stiles just sits there. 

Derek thinks he should say something, but Stiles has never been forthcoming about the right thing to do or say in such a situation, so he just stares at Zack for a moment before turning back to face Stiles. Stiles, who has gone ashen pale as the blood drains out of his face, sitting stock still with wide eyes and parted lips. 

Stiles had said only once that he hadn’t seen Zack in years. He guesses, from the look on Stiles’ face, that that was true. 

Zack collects his change and hovers at the side counter for his drink, hands in his pockets, and he hasn’t noticed them yet. Stiles clears his throat, finally, after what feels like an eternity of time being suspended. “Let’s go,” he says in a quiet voice, clasping onto Derek’s hand so hard it’s like his lifeline. 

“Okay,” Derek agrees. He picks up Stiles’ empty cup and tosses it into the garbage nearby, and Stiles hovers close to his side as they walk through the chairs and tables to make it to the exit. They have to walk right past Zack as they do, and the closer they get, the more Stiles presses into Derek’s side, like he’s trying to hide, and the thought makes Derek angry – but what’s he supposed to do about it? 

They walk, and pass him, and for a moment it’s almost like they’re home free and getting out the door without a confrontation, but then Zack’s voice calls to them from behind. “Stiles!” He says, and Stiles freezes.

For his part, Derek turns and looks at him, finding only openly and genuinely pleased surprise. Which isn’t the face Derek would have expected to find on a man such as himself, especially not when running into…well. Stiles. 

The word _sociopath_ that Stiles had attributed to him makes a lot more sense, in this moment. 

Stiles turns his head, and Derek can’t read his face. He says nothing. 

“You’re back home,” Zack goes on, and his eyes flick in Derek’s direction. There’s a second, two, three, four, and then, “Derek.” 

“Yup,” Derek says. “We’re leaving.”

He tries to push Stiles forward to get back the momentum he had before for clearing the hell out, but now it’s like Stiles’ feet have been dipped into cement. He’s unmovable. 

Zack takes in the entire sight of them. Stiles and Derek. How close they’re standing together. How Stiles still has Derek’s fingers interlaced with his own. Derek thinks about the expression he had on his face that night at Allison’s house, after Derek had beat the shit out of him, and he had asked if this was all about Stiles – how he’d looked at Derek with contempt, and not for reasons that Derek understood. Like he was jealous. 

“Well,” Zack draws the word out nice and long, and a cruel smile crosses over his face that makes Stiles visibly flinch. What does he associate with that, Derek wonders. “You really do have a type, is that right, Stiles?” 

Stiles is quiet, still, and Derek isn’t going to fucking stand here, so he pipes up. “Why don’t you shut your fucking mouth, get your coffee, and leave him alone?” Derek tries again to push on Stiles’ shoulders to get him to move, but again, he’s paralyzed or something. Derek has half a mind to pick him up and cart him away from this entire situation before it gets any worse. 

“I thought it was just the uniform that did it for you,” Zack goes on like Derek hadn’t spoken, like Derek isn’t there at all, his eyes zeroed in and glued to Stiles’ face. “I guess it’s the whole package, though, isn’t it?” 

“Let’s go,” Derek says again, and Stiles looks at him, but purses his lips. 

“You know, Stiles here likes big ones,” he says this to Derek, as if he doesn’t value his fucking life at all whatsoever. “Guys that are bigger than him. You know. Something about being overpowered really _does it_ for him.” 

A cup of coffee is dropped on the counter, Zack’s name called out, and he picks it up with a smile for the girl who made it – who blushes and ducks behind the espresso machine, likely to squeal about it. Then, he turns right back and looks at Stiles, that same smile turning ugly and malicious as the seconds pass. “I’ve missed you, you know,” Zack says, not a hint of true sincerity in his voice. “You never call.” 

Derek takes Stiles firmly by his shoulders this time and starts manhandling him. It’s apparently going to be the only way to get them out of this situation. It works for a second or two, Stiles stuttering forward on shaky feet, and then it abruptly stops working. Stiles digs his heels in, ducks out of Derek’s hold, and walks right back to where Zack is standing. 

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek tries, grabbing at his hand, but Stiles pulls it away and keeps walking – harsh, quick, and determined steps. 

“You never missed _me_ ,” Stiles accuses, and Zack raises his eyebrows and smiles, like it’s funny. “You just miss having someone to treat like a toy.” 

“The _big city_ really did you one, huh?” Zack taunts, and Stiles grits his teeth. “You’re all worldly and tough now. That’s not how I remember you.” 

“Where have _you_ been?” Stiles snaps, like a slap across Zack’s face, and Zack opens his mouth to explain, but Stiles cuts him off. “Rotting here, where you fucking belong. I hope you spend your whole life here, and die here, riding off your high school fame until it doesn’t get you anything anymore.” 

“I –“

“You were a coward then,” Stiles walks closer to him, close, close, right into his face, and Zack blinks. “And you’re a coward now. I know you. I’ve always known you. I know the one thing you’re still too chickenshit to admit to anyone else,” Stiles’ voice is low, and Zack looks surprised. His wide eyes blink, and keep blinking, like he’s stunned speechless. “Couldn’t beat it out of yourself so you tried it on me. Is that right?” 

“Hit him,” Derek suggests from the background, which makes Stiles snort in Derek’s face and roll his eyes. He turns away, hands in the air, and shakes his head. 

“Not worth it,” Stiles decides, and meets Zack’s eyes one last time. “Not fucking worth it. Let’s go.”

He walks away from where Zack is still standing, apparently struck silent still for the moment, and sidles up beside Derek. There’s a beat of quiet, while Stiles looks stricken and Derek doesn’t know what to do or say, and then Zack clears his throat from behind them. “Don’t forget that I had you first.” 

Stiles says nothing and does nothing, just keeps walking with his shoulders squared, towing Derek along behind him. Stiles will likely never be able to forget that Zack _had him first_ , in more ways than one, in every single possible way, all the worst ways in the world. That makes Derek angry, but he can literally only imagine what it makes Stiles feel. Derek doesn’t want to linger on it for any longer than is strictly necessary. 

Out in Derek’s car, Stiles slams the door behind him and puts on his seatbelt, glaring out into the setting sun and looking around himself. Beacon Hills, he must be thinking. Beacon fucking Hills. There is nothing left here for him anymore except the remnants of pain. He says nothing for a while, and Derek starts the car and clears his throat. “So,” he starts, and then doesn’t know where to go with it. He’s not great at comfort, which Stiles knows, and he’s also not great at knowing what to say, and Stiles also knows that, so they both let the word hang in the air between them, while Derek backs out of his parking spot and starts to drive them away. 

Stiles taps his fingers on top of his knee, leans forward to turn down the radio. He laughs. Not a very funny laugh – a humorless, cold laugh. “You know,” he starts, shaking his head, and Derek looks at him from the corner of his eyes. “He used to tell me I was his, like, disease. You know? Like, there was nothing wrong with him. He was fine. But I was – I was the problem. I was always the problem. I was some terrible thing that happened to him, and I was fucked up because at least I could actually articulate out loud that I liked boys, but him…there was never anything wrong with him. And it makes me wonder – you know he told me he doesn’t even like girls. He doesn’t like them. At all. So that just makes me think who he’s got now. I wish I had…” he swallows, thick and heavy, and shakes his head at himself. “I wish I had done something. Back then. All I did was be – a piece of shit, who was too scared to say anything even when my dad wanted to help me. And now he’s still walking around out there and he’s doing the same thing to other people, and I just let it happen.” 

This is the most Stiles has ever dared to say about Zack Peterson, about being that kid that he was at all. So to hear him speak about it at all is startling enough that it takes Derek a second to think of anything to say. He drives through traffic, whatever light traffic there is in a small town, and sighs through his nose. “What he does is what he does. It has nothing to do with you and it’s not your fault,” he says, and Stiles nods sort of detached, like he doesn’t believe it. “Even – look. Even if you had – done anything, back then. Filed charges, whatever. It would’ve been a restraining order and a slap on the wrist, for a kid like him. Domestic violence between teenagers – I don’t know, Stiles. It’s likely that you couldn’t have done anything even if you did try.”

Stiles sniffles, and Derek thinks he’s crying – but when he looks, it’s just Stiles laughing that same bitter laugh and shaking his head again. He looks up, not meeting Derek’s eyes but staring out the windshield. They slow to a stop sign at an intersection Stiles regards with distaste, another memory maybe, and then he looks out his own window. “That’s not all he did to me,” he says in a low voice, and Derek wants to ask, but he doesn’t. 

Besides. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to suss out what Zack could’ve done to Stiles that would quantify real jail time. 

“You think, okay. I go away to college for four years in New York, and I don’t see him. And I’m so – I’m different now. I’m older. I’m an adult, I’m different, I’m not that stupid kid anymore. And you think, well, then I’m over it,” he frowns. “Some things, I guess. Some things.” 

“Some things,” Derek agrees in a low voice. He reaches out and runs his fingers up and down Stiles’ back, placating, the only thing he can do. He can’t touch or soothe away that part of him that Zack has – he never can. 

“He was nice to me at first you know,” Stiles turns his body around and faces Derek head on in his seat, and they’re driving again, away from the stop sign. “Just – if you wonder how I could ever…I wasn’t that pathetic or desperate, okay? To be with…he was nice. At first.” 

“I know,” Derek says. 

Stiles looks at his hands. “Some things.” 

They drive in silence for a minute or so, Stiles somber and quiet and Derek at a loss. It speaks to the depth of their relationship that Stiles has chosen to share all of this with Derek, that he’s speaking up, finally, but Derek also thinks there’s a part of him that didn’t want to know. Stiles always seems so steady, completely clear-headed and fine, all the time – but he isn’t. Not always. He tried to kill himself. Entirely emotionally stable people don’t do that, and it scares the shit out of Derek to think about it. How Stiles can be fragile when he’s supposed to be the exact opposite. 

Derek pulls into Stiles’ driveway, where his father’s cruiser is parked, and he wonders if he’ll bring up running into Zack to his dad. Derek’s money is on _no_ , which is fine. Some things are better left unsaid. 

Stiles unbuckles himself and leans over the console to wrap Derek in a big bear hug, holding on for dear life and pushing his nose into Derek’s neck. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you,” Derek says back, kissing him on the side of the head. They pull apart and Stiles smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. He reaches out to play with the collar of Derek’s shirt, and then he tilts his head to the side and sighs through his nose. “I learned something else in Greek, you know.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Stiles looks pleased, smiling even wider. “Let’s hear it.” 

Derek had spent an inordinate amount of time going over and over it, repeating it to himself and using google translate to speak it out loud to help him pronounce it better. As he says it out loud, he knows it sounds bad and awkward, but Stiles watches him intently, brow furrowed. When Derek finishes, he raises his eyebrows as understanding for what he just said dawns on him, and then he leans back. Away, into his seat, staring up at the ceiling. He grins up at it. “Take courage, my heart,” he translates, “you have seen worse than this. How did you –“ he looks right at Derek, shock and awe all over his features, “…how did you know that? Find it?” 

Derek shrugs. “It’s highlighted pretty aggressively in your copy of the Odyssey.” 

“Why did you learn that?” 

Derek shrugs again. “It seemed important to you.” 

“It is,” Stiles agrees, tracing his eyes over Derek’s face again and again. From the corner of his eye, Derek can see the Sheriff poking his head out from behind the blinds in the kitchen and glowering out at them, and he ignores that for the moment. No, the man doesn’t particularly like him, but then Stiles could bring home an A+ honor student with a million dollars and a nice car who’s polite and a gentleman and boring, and the Sheriff would hate him too, so Derek doesn’t take much offense. “You learned it just to say it to me.” 

“I guess.”

Stiles breathes and takes Derek’s hand hostage, squeezing it tight in his own. “Take courage, my heart,” he repeats again, disbelief in his voice. “I fucking hate you. Stop doing dumb stuff like this, it makes me so mad.” 

Derek rolls his eyes and kisses Stiles on the mouth, while Stiles pretends to be disgusted by it, angling his head away and huffing. “Your dad is staring at us.” 

Stiles looks out the windshield and does, indeed, spot his father leering at them – for the half a second that he manages to catch before his dad whips away to pretend like he wasn’t watching. Stiles purses his lips. “I’m twenty-three. He acts like I’m sixteen still, sometimes.” 

“He hates me.”

Stiles snorts. “It’s so funny.”

“I’m glad you think so!”

He looks smug as he says, “your parents _love_ me.” 

They actually do, at that. Or at least, his mother does. Stiles has this bizarrely natural proclivity to be charming and friendly when it comes to people’s parents most of all – it’s like he’s perfected the art of pretending like he’s never smoked weed or had even a sip of beer, smiling all squeaky clean and guileless. It must have something to do with being the son of the sheriff, since Derek knows for a solid fact that Stiles had gotten drunk all the time in high school and yet his father never found out about it once. 

Derek’s mother thinks Stiles is the most amazing person that ever existed, when she doesn’t even know the half of it. She’s teaching him how to bake, for Christ’s sake. They bond. As for Derek’s father, he has this tendency to refer to Stiles as “Derek’s friend” and seems to struggle with the word boyfriend, but they shake hands and Stiles feigns interest in sports and talks with him about good books they’ve read and it’s all – better. Than Derek thought it would be. There are times when it’s awkward, and apparently they can’t tell Derek’s grandmother because it’d send her into cardiac arrest, but it’s fine. It’s good. 

“Anyway, don’t you have to go in?” 

“Yes,” Stiles says definitively, but then he doesn’t move. “Don’t you have to go?”

“Yes,” Derek agrees back to him, but then he doesn’t start the car or let go of Stiles’ hand. They sit there staring at each other for a while, daring the other to be the first to move silently, and then Stiles’ lips curve up at the corners.

“I can’t believe this physical representation of _no, you hang up first_.” 

“One of us definitely should – go.” 

They stay sitting. And Derek doesn’t know how to let go of Stiles’ hand, or end the conversation, or finish the night off at all. Stiles looks much the same. “Do you wanna just…” he waves his hand in the air, the one that’s not currently clutched onto Derek’s like a leech, “…stay and talk for a while?” 

Derek looks at the time on the dashboard. He has to be home for dinner in forty-five minutes, but then, he doesn’t care. Maybe he just won’t go. “Yeah, okay. What do you want to talk about?”

Stiles leans his head against his seat and smiles at him lazily. “I can talk to you about anything,” he says, and Derek leans back in his own seat. “I’m gonna miss you so much.”

“When?” Derek raises his eyebrows. “We’re not spending any time apart from one another in the foreseeable future – we bum around here, go to Greece, come back, go to Philadelphia.” 

Stiles gives him a look. “When I have to sleep in my own bed alone tonight. Climb in through my window at midnight.” 

“I’m not sixteen, and I’m not doing that.” 

Stiles grabs his fingers tighter and smiles. “I wish I knew you when I was sixteen,” he says in a low voice, and Derek can’t say that he disagrees. Derek would’ve given anything to have been there – to have been there first. To stop all the bad things from happening to him. 

“I’ll come in through your window,” Derek concedes, and Stiles nods like he knew Derek would even when he was protesting it. “Just – is there a drain pipe I can shimmy up?” 

“You climb onto the banister of the porch rail, get up onto the roof and make sure you stay low because you’ll be crawling past my dad’s window –“

“Oh, my God.” 

“…and then you climb onto the higher roof and then you’re at my window.”

Derek looks at the shingles outside of what he knows to be Stiles’ window. “That looks like a steep drop.” 

“Broke my arm once falling. But you’re way more graceful than I am,” he promises, which Derek doesn’t necessarily agree with. Stiles is clutzy, but he’s also thin and agile. Derek is big and bumbling, and if he falls, he will fall hard, and it will be bad. Nevermind the Sheriff coming outside to find his grown son’s adult boyfriend half dead in a bush in his yard from trying to sneak into their house. 

“I really should get to dinner,” he says, glancing at the clock again. 

“So, go.” 

They sit there, and the sun sets more and more, and neither of them move. Stiles’ skin goes orange from the sunlight, and Derek has to pull down the visor on his ceiling to block it out of his eyes. California sun, and a California Summer, and Stiles smiling at him like he’s something from one of his books. 

This is the only spot Derek ever wants to be. The rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said, updates every Monday, so see you then lmao. Also I am garbage at tagging appropriately and this is a story with a LOT in it, so catch me on my tags as it progresses, would you??


End file.
